Koo OT field goal lifts .500 Falcons into 1st place

• Previously covered University of Michigan for ESPN.com and AnnArbor.com
• Also covered Notre Dame for Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

ATLANTA – They came streaming off the sidelines and surrounded Younghoe Koo. After a wild, somewhat improbable game Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the reliable Atlanta Falcons kicker had done what the franchise had made him one of the NFL’s highest-paid kickers to do.

Win games.

Koo made a 41-yard field goal in overtime to give Atlanta a 37-34 win over the Carolina Panthers, giving the franchise a one-game lead in the NFC South where only the Falcons are at .500. Everyone else is below.

This game, well, the Falcons had this won and then lost and then won again. Twice.

In regulation, Atlanta held a six-point lead after a Younghoe Koo field goal with 36 seconds left, 34-28. Then a 62-yard Hail Mary touchdown from Carolina quarterback PJ Walker to receiver DJ Moore with 12 seconds left appeared to give the Panthers the win.

But Moore removed his helmet, leading to an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, pushing the extra point attempt back 15 yards. Carolina kicker Eddy Pineiro missed the longer extra point, keeping the score 34-34 and sending the game to overtime.

In overtime, the Falcons got the ball, and then quarterback Marcus Mariota threw an interception to CJ Henderson that was returned 54 yards. The Panthers (2-6) were in easy field goal range for the win.

But Pinero missed the 32-yard field goal, giving Atlanta (4-4) life again.

In this division this season, nothing less might have been expected than the unexpected.

Entering Week 8, there were only two other times in the four-division era – which started in 2002 – where no team in the division had been .500 or better: The 2020 NFC East and 2015 AFC South. That’s not an issue at the moment for the NFC South anymore, as the Falcons are now at .500.

Atlanta is in first place in the division despite not being over .500 at any point this season.

This is the latest the Falcons have been in first place in the division since 2016, the year the franchise last went to the Super Bowl.

It’s a long way from Week 1 for the Falcons, where the team blew a 16-point second half lead, and Atlanta head coach Arthur Smith had a fiery press conference where he talked about people writing off and “burying” his team before the season started.

“We don’t care,” Smith said then. “We’ll get back to work.”

The Falcons, from that point, continued to show they believed in their second-year head coach. Up until last Sunday against Cincinnati, the Falcons had been in every game they had played despite having a roster with the most dead cap in the NFL – over $80 million according to Roster Management System – and over $9 million in cap room left on the roster, too.

It’s a team that has turned over almost their entire roster from when Smith and general manager Terry Fontenot took over in January 2021, including the jettisoning of franchise icons: quarterback Matt Ryan (traded to Indianapolis in March) and receiver Julio Jones (traded to Tennessee in 2021).

And yet it’s a team that, for now, is in first place in one of the most intriguing divisions in the NFL, where every team is within two games of the top of the division.

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