The Morning TiltSunday, October 25, 2026

Atlanta played three times on Saturday, in two buildings, and lost all three. None of the three is finished, and the Falcons kick off at one.

Start with the Dream, who have the most at stake and the least of it settled. Golden State took Game 4 67-62 at State Farm Arena and the Finals are level at two apiece. Atlanta lost the second quarter 15-26 and won the second half 36-25, which is the kind of split that produces two entirely different accounts of the same afternoon depending on which half you watched. They also made eleven more free throws than Golden State did and lost by five, which is the sort of line that usually means the game was decided somewhere other than the scoreboard suggests.

Simone found where. Allisha Gray picked up three fouls inside the first two minutes and nine seconds of the opening quarter, played twenty-two minutes, and the national copy filed her night as a shooting slump. Her piece is the one to read this morning — it is about a lineup Atlanta arrived at by accident on Saturday and could choose on purpose tomorrow. Game 5 is Monday at eight, at Chase Center.

Falcons

San Francisco arrive unbeaten and without Nick Bosa, Deebo Samuel and Mike Evans. All three were confirmed out on the league injury board this morning, all three carry a November 8 return date, and Evans is the one who leads the 49ers in receiving yards.

What follows from that is the part worth noticing. San Francisco are favoured by two and a half. A team that has not lost a game is laying a field goal on the road to a team that has not won one at home.

Atlanta's own report is the longer of the two — three out, three on injured reserve, seven listed questionable. Miles made the case Saturday that Friday's designations cost San Francisco less than they cost Atlanta, and the national picks have since landed on the same side by a different road. Dex is asking the other question: the one prominent voice arguing San Francisco loses this game covers San Francisco.

One o'clock. Atlanta have scored forty-nine points in three games in that building, and both of this season's wins came somewhere else.

Hawks

The home opener went 121-114 to Houston, which leaves Atlanta 2-1 with both wins on the road and the first night in front of their own crowd spent losing.

The box score is strange in a specific and fixable way. Atlanta out-assisted Houston 35-27, outscored them in the paint 58-46, and won fast-break points 20-12. They lost anyway, because they took forty-nine threes and made thirteen while Houston took thirty-five and made fourteen. Fourteen more attempts, one fewer make.

Jalen Johnson had twenty-six points, nine rebounds and sixteen assists in thirty-eight minutes, and was the only Atlanta starter to finish on the right side of the plus-minus column.

They get Houston again tomorrow night, in Houston. The same two teams, the venue reversed, inside three days. Whether Saturday was a shooting night or a shot-selection problem is a question that normally takes a month to answer. This one gets answered on Monday.

Atlanta United

Chicago won 3-2 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Atlanta led inside four minutes.

The AJC led its match report on the home drought, which was the right instinct, and then printed the home record underneath as 4-10-6, which cannot be right — Atlanta have played sixteen matches at home this season, not twenty. The real line is four wins, two draws, ten defeats.

Tito has the correction and what sits underneath it. The last home win was August 23rd, 2-1 over Sporting Kansas City. The six home matches since have produced one draw and five defeats, eight goals scored and sixteen conceded. There is exactly one home fixture left in the season: Toronto, the first of November.

Thirty points with three to play is a ceiling of thirty-nine. Red Bull New York are on thirty-nine now.

Braves

The last thing this front office did was on October 20, and it was small — minor-league contracts for an outfielder, Euris Polanco, and a right-hander, Francis Cuevas. Nothing since.

Five days of silence is not news on its own. What makes it worth a paragraph is what is running in the meantime: the World Series, featuring the two clubs this roster is currently being measured against. Ellis made the structural version of that argument on Friday and it has held up all weekend — the problem was never the power.

It is October and nothing is supposed to have happened yet. But the first real decision of this winter has not been made, and a decision that waits long enough starts to read like one that was taken.

One more thing.

Atlanta United kicked off on the grass at Mercedes-Benz Stadium at half past seven on Saturday night. The Falcons kick off on the same field at one o'clock this afternoon. Seventeen and a half hours between the two. One surface, two sports, two sets of people who think of that building as theirs.

The grounds crew is the only part of this city that had a good Saturday.