The last unbeaten team falls in Atlanta: Falcons beat the 49ers 29-20

There are no unbeaten teams left in the NFC, and Atlanta is the reason. The Falcons beat San Francisco 29-20 on Sunday for their first home win of the season, and they beat the 49ers the way underdogs are supposed to and so rarely manage: by taking the ball away, four turnovers in all, and by getting the cleaner quarterbacking on the night that mattered. Michael Penix Jr threw for 213 yards and three touchdowns on 25 of 34 passing, without an interception, scoring throws to Muse, Pitts Sr and London, while Atlanta's defence turned Brock Purdy's evening into a series of apologies.

The story of the night, though, wore a rookie's jersey. A week ago Kendal Daniels left a game on a cart with a neck injury, the kind of picture that makes a stadium go quiet. On Sunday he intercepted Purdy in the fourth quarter, recovered a fumble, and led Atlanta with 11 tackles. Jessie Bates III picked Purdy off as well, and between them the Falcons' secondary made the 49ers' passing game look hurried in a way it has not looked all season. Comeback stories are easy to oversell in this league. Daniels is not a comeback story yet. He is a rookie who played the best game of his life seven days after the worst scare of it, which is better.

San Francisco will read its first loss, after a 6-1 start, as a turnover problem, and it is right to, up to a point. Four giveaways will lose almost any game in this league, and the 49ers know the fix list by heart. But the turnovers were not accidents scattered by luck. They were forced, by pressure and by coverage that held long enough for the pressure to matter, and a defence that can force them against this offence has done something repeatable. That is the part of Sunday that should worry the rest of the NFC more than the result itself.

Atlanta, meanwhile, has spent years as the league's nearly team, talented enough to be interesting and loose enough to be maddening. A first home win taken off the conference's last unbeaten side does not settle any of that history. It does give the Falcons a proof of concept they have been missing: this defence, playing like this, can beat anybody left on the schedule, and Penix, protected from mistakes by that defence, can play the steady game that lets it happen.

Our call is that Atlanta is a playoff team if, and only if, the turnovers travel. Forced fumbles and interceptions come in bunches for defences that hit and cover in the right order, and Sunday's were earned, not gifted, so we are inclined to believe in the mechanism even while discounting any single night's count. San Francisco remains the NFC's most complete team and one loss in Atlanta changes that hardly at all. But the conference's aura of inevitability is gone, and it was Atlanta, of all teams, that took it. That is worth more to the Falcons than the win itself.