Falcons fourth down excellence is driving their success

The team already has more fourth down conversion than it managed in all of 2023.

The Atlanta Falcons are winning for many reasons. One of them is a new and frankly welcome level of aggression on fourth down, one that is carrying Atlanta not just to key conversions to keep drives alive, but also to surprise fourth down scores. The Falcons have two touchdowns on four fourth down attempts over the past two weeks, but more than that, they’re not letting those fourth and short opportunities go to waste with cowardly punts.

For the season, they’re 11/15 on fourth downs, a 73.3% conversion number that ranks fourth in the NFL and matches, interestingly enough, their season total from the 2010 season, when Mike Mularkey was cooking. They’re also tied for third in successful conversions even though they’re just 10th in the NFL in attempts.

Over the past three years with Arthur Smith at the helm, the Falcons converted 27 of 61 attempts, a 44% percent mark that would rank 26th in the NFL this season. The fact that they’re converting these at such a high rate and even scoring touchdowns off of them is helping to make up for a middling third down conversion rate, as Atlanta is currently 15th in the league there.

Here’s the past decade of conversion numbers.

4th down conversions/attempts

2023: 8/19 (42%)

2022: 9/18 (50%)

2021: 10/24 (41.6%)

2020: 15/26 (57.7%)

2019: 13/21 (61.9%)

2018: 10/19 (52.6%)

2017: 4/13 (30.7%)

2016: 8/14 (57%)

2015: 10/19 (52.6%)

What you’ll note is that Falcons attempted their highest total in the past decade in 2020, the year where Raheem Morris was the interim head coach. The second-highest was under Arthur Smith in the first season, when a bad team still had Matt Ryan and had all the reason in the world to play with reckless abandon. The Falcons were not very successful under Smith on fourth downs—they were 29th in 2023, 17th in 2022, and 28th in the 2021—but they didn’t exactly shy away from trying.

The 2024 version of this team, meanwhile, has Morris’s buy-in to go for it, an offensive coordinator in Zac Robinson who clearly relishes the opportunity, and a talented offense capable of converting. That’s why Atlanta is currently on track to post their highest number of fourth down conversion attempts in 40 years, and may well finish as one of the five or ten best teams in the NFL at actually converting them.

The sour note here, if you’re inclined to find it, is that the Falcons are finding themselves having to convert these instead of simply keeping drives alive before fourth down. As noted by reader NorthernHawksFan, Atlanta’s third down conversion rate is 38.5%, which is steadily getting better but is still far from great. The fact that they’re willing, ready, and able to extend series to four downs and can punish unready defenses, as they did against the Buccaneers to the tune of a Kirk Cousins sneak and long Kyle Pitts touchdown and against the Cowboys for a Darnell Mooney score, still makes them extremely dangerous.

Morris’s 2020 history with the team, when they set the high water mark for attempts since 1984, suggests he’s not going to take his foot off the gas, and Robinson’s excellence in fourth down play calling suggests he shouldn’t. The Falcons are a contender for a variety of reasons, but their ability to punish teams that allow them to get to fourth and manageable is an emerging reason for their success and should fill opposing defenses with dread.