There seem to be very positive Kyle Pitts developments.

Well, that was insane. It’s hard to put into a singular column everything that went down at the end of Atlanta’s thriller against the Panthers, and the high end ramifications in the entire division race as a result, but with the dust settled we see the Atlanta Falcons in first place in the NFC South with a 4-4 record.

It was an explosive second half after the teams went into the break with at 14-10 (thanks to a Lorenzo Carter pic 6), as you can tell by the final scoreline of 37-34. That means that the fantasy points were plentiful for Marcus Mariota and company.

There is a lot of great content available here at The Falcoholic, and I encourage you to check it out if you want some in-depth analysis. This article will look at things strictly from a fantasy football perspective (that means looking at nothing other than pure statistics). Here are Atlanta’s fantasy stud and fantasy dud from Week 8’s victory against the Carolina Panthers.

Fantasy Stud/Dud 2022 History:

Past Studs: Cordarrelle Patterson (2), Marcus Mariota (2), Tyler Allgeier (2) Drake London (1)

Past Duds: Kyle Pitts (3), Younghoe Koo (2) Falcons D/ST (1), Marcus Mariota (1)

Fantasy Stud – Kyle Pitts

Stat Line: 5 catches, 80 receiving yards, 1 receiving touchdown: 14.0 standard league points; 19.0 PPR points

Kyle Pitts finally looked like the guy many people drafted in the third round of their fantasy leagues this summer, putting together his best performance of the season and scoring his second touchdown in three weeks. Pitts led the team in targets, catches and receiving yards, while scoring one of three offensive touchdowns for the Falcons.

It’s a sigh of relief to fantasy managers seeing Pitts so involved in the offense, being schemed open on a couple of occasions and still being targeted in the red zone once again. That was enough to make the former first rounder out of Florida this week’s overall TE3 going into the Monday Night Football game. This will be just his second top 10 finish at his position this season, and potentially his first in the top five.

It’s a great development, and showcases that Pitts may be a heavy part of the game plan if the Falcons get into shootout situations. That could absolutely be the case in next week’s game against the Chargers. Continue to fire Pitts up in your lineup given how weak the tight end position is overall.

Dud

Drake London: 4 catches, 31 receiving yards: 3.1 standard leagues; 7.1 PPR points

It’s discouraging if you had Drake London in your lineup, saw how much the Falcons lit up the scoreboard, and noticed that the top 10 pick out of USC did not do much damage himself.

Marcus Mariota threw for a season high 253 passing yards, but it was Pitts and deep threat hero Damiere Byrd who gobbled up 147 of those yards, as well as 17 of 28 total targets. Pitts was clearly the first option today, with Byrd showing out late in the game and London being an intermediary target who did come up with some clutch catches and was a key cog in the run game as a blocker. Unfortunately, the quantity of those catches was not plentiful enough for fantasy managers.

London is hard to trust in lineups given Atlanta’s conservative play calling nature and Mariota’s propensity to distribute the ball to a number of receivers, as we saw this week with Byrd and previously with Olamide Zaccheaus. London is the most receiver on this team, and I would be more hopeful than for his talent to win out in future shootouts, however. Those could be pretty frequent given how disastrous Atlanta’s secondary is at the moment.