# Falcons Punditry Check: Drake London Has Cost the Field 20 Straight Bad Grades, and Nobody Has Ever Been Right About Atlanta in January | MissedTakes Daily

*Published 2026-09-09 — MissedTakes*

The single worst thing you can do on the [Atlanta Falcons](/nfl/teams/falcons) beat, judged by our grading, is have an opinion about [Drake London](/nfl/players/drake-london). Twenty graded takes name him. They average **21.7 accuracy** and a skill delta of **-44.5** — comfortably the worst of any Falcon we hold enough calls on to measure.

The 2025 wreckage is specific. [Andrew Erickson](/pundits/andrew-erickson) called London the overall fantasy WR1 ("that is my mile take") and also put him at 15 receiving touchdowns; London finished WR17 and scored 7, and the touchdown call graded 0 with a **-154.2** skill delta. [Derek Brown](/pundits/derek-brown) made the same WR1-overall call twice, once as a round-two sleeper, which graded 0 at **-200** because the bar was simply London repeating his own WR6 finish. [Gregg Rosenthal](/pundits/gregg-rosenthal) said it "wouldn't shock me at all" if London went first-team All-Pro: 0, **-200**. Erickson's overall record is 57.03 accuracy across 143 graded takes, so this is not a bad pundit — it is one player who has eaten a lot of good ones.

The reversal is already in the file, ungraded. Steve Krebs has London in a 2026 bust column twice in two days, arguing a top-10 receiver price is unpayable "with all that's surrounding the starting quarterback." That is the whole Atlanta argument in one clause.

![Falcons takes by player, graded](/posts/visuals/fa1d71ea-4640-45b6-876a-7291dddb0f2d.png)

## The quarterback room is where everyone is talking, and where they've been least wrong

Atlanta named [Tua Tagovailoa](/nfl/players/tua-tagovailoa) the Week 1 starter, and the field split immediately on how long that lasts. [Albert Breer](/pundits/albert-breer) reports [Cooper Rush](/nfl/players/cooper-rush) as the backup for the opener and expects [Michael Penix Jr.](/nfl/players/michael-penix-jr) to "get an extended run." [Zachary Pereles](/pundits/zachary-pereles) says a change "could be quickly in the offing." [Lance Zierlein](/pundits/lance-zierlein) — currently No. 1 on the board at a 39.1 MissedTakes Score — thinks Tua gets a start and "probably should." Derek Brown goes furthest: "I think [Jack Strand](/nfl/players/jack-strand) is going to make some starts this year. I don't have any faith in Pennix and Tua." All of it is pending.

The graded prior favors the people talking about this room. Atlanta quarterback takes are 27 graded at **84.3 accuracy** and +16.5 skill; Penix specifically is 7 graded at 84.5 accuracy and **+60.4** skill — the best-scoring Falcon subject on the board. Receiver takes, by contrast, are 34 graded at 31.1 accuracy and -40.6 skill.

Roster week just settled and it settled cleanly. [Scott Kennedy](/pundits/scott-kennedy) called all three of Tua, Penix and undrafted rookie Strand onto the 53 — [graded 100 with a +200 skill delta on Strand](/opinions/4271fbfe-2320-41d0-a8f0-000ddbb80076) — plus the tight end trio and four receivers, including a +200 on [Zachariah Branch](/nfl/players/zachariah-branch). He is 9-for-9 at 100 accuracy, a 64.29 score, and still flagged **provisional**: nine calls is nine calls, and provisional records stay off the leaderboard. On the other side, [Tyler Sullivan](/pundits/tyler-sullivan) put Strand on the practice squad (0, -200) and [Carter Bahns](/pundits/carter-bahns) suggested Rush "might have to sign elsewhere" (0, -200).

## Priced right, then talked into the playoffs

Atlanta's punditry is 360 takes, 149 of them graded — a real file, not a thin one. And it has a clear shape.

![What kind of Falcons call actually lands](/posts/visuals/bd6acd5c-cf1e-4d92-b453-9a583d936d6f.png)

Nine graded division-winner picks on Atlanta: **0 accuracy**. Eight graded playoff-berth picks: **0 accuracy, -200 average skill**. Seventeen game-outcome calls involving the Falcons: 35.3 accuracy, -20.7 skill — including a Week 9 pileup where [Jonas Knox](/pundits/jonas-knox), [Jason McIntyre](/pundits/jason-mcintyre) and LaVar Arrington all took Atlanta at New England and lost 24-23, each at -156. [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) took Atlanta to win outright on Sunday night in Week 7 ("I think the wrong team is favored"); it was 20-10 San Francisco, -167.

Yet the same field prices the team almost exactly right when asked for a number. Season win-total calls on Atlanta grade 86.7 accuracy, and the 2025 consensus was near-perfect: five calls of 8, 8, 8, 8 and 10 against an actual 8-9. Atlanta has finished 8-9 in each of the last two seasons and has not made the playoffs since 2017 in our records. Punditry knows this and keeps upgrading them anyway — Wright's newest call, from September 4, is Atlanta as his "deep sleeper," while [John Breech](/pundits/john-breech) has them 6-11 and third in the division.

Whose Atlanta calls have earned anything, at five graded or more: Kennedy (100 accuracy, 9), Rich Eisen (89.2, 10), Rosenthal (62.9, 6), [Jaime Eisner](/pundits/jaime-eisner) (37.5 accuracy but +38.5 skill, all mock-draft picks where a shuffled mock scores 50), [Kyle Crabbs](/pundits/kyle-crabbs) (39.2, +35.7). At the bottom: Erickson, 0 accuracy across 5 Falcons calls. No logged reversals on Atlanta this week — the site's changed-their-mind file is empty league-wide.

## The league day in brief

- **1,154 takes graded in seven days, every one of them a Roster Spot Call** — the 53-man deadline flushing the whole preseason file at once. 468 new takes came in.
- Perfect scores went to [Jared Koch](/pundits/jared-koch) on Brevin Jordan, Kennedy on Atlanta's quarterbacks, and [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke) on PFF depth-chart projections — though Jahnke's [unsigned PFF recap](/opinions/47566b48-8024-4960-b25c-11c03fe43543) also produced several -200s in the same batch. Darius Slayton's survival cost both [Paul Schwartz](/pundits/paul-schwartz) and [Evan Tarracciano](/pundits/evan-tarracciano) a zero.
- Standing consensus misses still lean 2025: the field was 6.3 wins high on Kansas City (13 calls) and 5 wins low on New England, Seattle and Denver.
- The 2025 MVP ballot: [Matthew Stafford](/pundits/daniel-jeremiah) drew 26 of 100 picks and won it. Offensive Rookie of the Year went to Tetairoa McMillan, named on 5 of 29 ballots.

Full standings, with provisional records excluded, are on the [leaderboard](/leaderboard).