{"id":23300,"date":"2025-12-12T11:03:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T11:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/nfl-atlanta-falcons-fight-back-to-upset-tampa-bay-buccaneers-after-kyle-pitts-hat-trick\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T11:03:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T11:03:42","slug":"nfl-atlanta-falcons-fight-back-to-upset-tampa-bay-buccaneers-after-kyle-pitts-hat-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/nfl-atlanta-falcons-fight-back-to-upset-tampa-bay-buccaneers-after-kyle-pitts-hat-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL: Atlanta Falcons fight back to upset Tampa Bay Buccaneers after Kyle Pitts hat-trick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Bucs opened the scoring with a Sean Tucker touchdown before the Falcons led 14-13 at half-time after Pitts, who came into Thursday&#8217;s game with just one touchdown all season, claimed his first two scores.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The home team went into a 28-14 lead early in the fourth quarter after Baker Mayfield made touchdown passes to Devin Culp and Chris Godwin Jr.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Veteran Kirk Cousins was making his fourth straight start after a season-ending injury to Atlanta&#8217;s starting quarterback Michael Penix Jr and the 37-year-old led the Falcons to the 32nd fourth-quarter comeback of his career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Running back Bijan Robinson got into the end zone before Pitts claimed his hat-trick and Atlanta regained possession with less than two minutes left.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And despite being backed up to third and 28 after recovering his own fumble and a 10-yard penalty, Cousins made key passes to Pitts and receiver David Sills V to get the Falcons in range for Gonzalez to kick a 43-yard game winner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cousins finished with 373 passing yards and three touchdown passes to Pitts, who claimed 166 yards from 11 receptions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Atlanta are now 5-9 and their upset of Tampa Bay did Carolina a favour as the Panthers (7-6) now top the NFC South and face the Bucs in two of their last four games, with only the division winner guaranteed a play-off spot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/american-football\/articles\/cz944y74039o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bucs opened the scoring with a Sean Tucker touchdown before the Falcons led 14-13 at half-time after Pitts, who came into Thursday&#8217;s game with just one touchdown all season, claimed his first two scores. The home team went into a 28-14 lead early in the fourth quarter after Baker Mayfield made touchdown passes to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23302,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23300\/revisions\/23302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}