ATLANTA — Michael Penix Jr. made all the plays necessary in his “Monday Night Football” debut and had plenty of help from running back Bijan Robinson and wide receiver Drake London en route to the Atlanta Falcons beating the Buffalo Bills 24-14 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Penix, the second-year quarterback, was 20-of-32 for 250 yards passing and a touchdown. Robinson had 170 yards rushing, including an 81-yard touchdown run, and another 68 receiving. London had 10 catches for 158 yards and a touchdown. It was the second time Robinson and London each had 150 yards and a touchdown as teammates in their careers. They’re the only Falcons teammates to do it more than once since the 1970 merger, per ESPN Research.

Atlanta’s defense might have been even better than its offense. The Falcons forced the Bills into four three-and-outs, which was double Buffalo’s highest single-game total of the season coming in, and sacked quarterback Josh Allen four times.

Here are the most important things to know from Monday night for both teams:

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Drake London steps out of bounds just before hitting pylon

Drake London appears to dive for a touchdown, but his foot lands out of bounds a yard short for the Falcons as time expires in the first half.

Is Robinson the leading contender for NFL Offensive Player of the Year? What Robinson has done early this season is remarkable. The third-year running back has more yards from scrimmage through five games than any other player in Falcons history. His 138 rushing yards at the half were the most by any player in the league after two quarters this season. Robinson came into the game leading the league with 146 yards from scrimmage per game — and then put up 238 on Monday night, the second-highest total in the league this season. Robinson is the second player to reach 450 rushing yards and 300 receiving yards through his first five games of a season in NFL history, joining Thurman Thomas in 1991, according to ESPN Research.

Trend to watch: The Falcons were without two of their top three wide receivers in Darnell Mooney (hamstring) and Ray-Ray McCloud III (healthy scratch). McCloud’s absence was a surprise. It forced the Falcons to rely heavily on two skill players: Bijan Robinson and Drake London, who combined for 89% of the team’s yardage in the first half and came in with the highest percentage of their team’s scrimmage yardage (57%) out of any duo in the NFL, according to ESPN Research.

Stat to know: The Falcons’ 335 yards in the first half were their most before halftime since 2009. For the first time in Falcons franchise history, the team had a running back and wide receiver — Robinson and London, respectively — eclipse the 100-yard mark in the first half. — Marc Raimondi

Next game: at San Francisco (8:20 p.m. ET, Oct. 19)

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Bills comes up with a huge blocked field goal

Parker Romo goes to kick a field goal for Atlanta, but the Bills comes through with a big block.

The frustration was visible from quarterback Josh Allen, who pushed his helmet to the ground as he sat on the bench once again after failing to string together a drive in the middle of the fourth quarter.

The struggles persisted in Monday’s game at Atlanta as the Bills (4-2) suffered their second straight loss. Though the defense was sloppy and gave up too many yards, the offense failed to take advantage of opportunities. In the first half, the Bills punted on four straight drives, and though they scored a touchdown on their first drive of the second half, the spark didn’t linger. They turned the ball over on downs, giving the Falcons the ball back at their 47-yard line. And even when the Bills blocked a field goal attempt, the offense responded with back-to-back three-and-outs.

Allen finished the game 15-for-26 (57.7%) with 180 passing yards, 2 passing touchdowns, 2 interceptions and 4 sacks. He also rushed for 42 yards on six carries. Tight end Dalton Kincaid (oblique) was inactive, and wide receiver Joshua Palmer (ankle) was injured in the first half and didn’t return. Offensive coordinator Joe Brady went away from running back James Cook III late in the game and did not use him on third downs despite Cook rushing for 87 yards on 17 carries.

After starting the season scoring 30-plus points in the first four games, the Bills’ offense has work to do.

Where does the Bills’ offense go from here? The question starts to become, do the Bills need to acquire help on on offense once again, albeit coming off a game against one of the league’s top defenses? Last season, the Bills traded for wide receiver Amari Cooper before the trade deadline, and the lack of support around Allen has led to that seeming like a possibility again. Allen was pressured on 47.1% of his dropbacks vs. the Falcons, the highest rate since the 2020 AFC Championship Game (47.4%). Right now, this is an offense searching for answers and help might be needed.

Trend to watch: Injuries. The Bills came into this game with two starters — linebacker Matt Milano (pectoral) and tight end Dalton Kincaid (oblique) — out because of injuries. Before the game, defensive tackle DaQuan Jones suffered a calf injury in warmups and was ruled out. Wide receiver Joshua Palmer (ankle) left the game in the first half, linebacker Terrel Bernard didn’t play in the second half because of an ankle injury, and safety Cole Bishop missed time in the second half because of cramping, but returned in the fourth quarter. The Bills have a bye this coming week, and it couldn’t come at a better time for much-needed rest.

Best quote out of the locker room: Left tackle Dion Dawkins on what he feels like needs to be done for the offense to be consistent: “I wish I had an answer, because I would’ve said it today. But no one knows. We just got to just keep playing hard and keep being us. Protect our guy, protect, play, catch, pass, block, do what we do well and we’ll be A-OK. It sucks to lose, but once again, it’s not the end. It’s not the end. Even though it might feel like it.”

Stat to know: The Falcons’ 335 first-half yards were the most that the Bills have allowed before halftime since 2001 (Week 2, at Indianapolis Colts). Missed tackles were a major theme for the Bills’ defense, especially in the first half, but the unit adjusted well in the second half. The Falcons were held to 8 net yards in the third quarter and 109 net yards in the fourth. — Alaina Getzenberg

Next game: at Carolina (1 p.m. ET, Oct. 26)

TORONTO — Every so often in the Seattle Mariners clubhouse, the “Top Gun Anthem,” full of soaring guitar notes and pick-me-up vibes, will randomly blast from inside a locker. Everyone knows the culprit. Jorge Polanco, the Mariners’ veteran second baseman, is not a fan of silencing his phone.

“But he loves Maverick and Iceman,” Mariners star Cal Raleigh said.

Nobody really minds. When a player is doing what Polanco has done this postseason — rescuing the Mariners from the danger zone seemingly daily, with his latest trick a go-ahead three-run home run that paved the way for Monday’s 10-3 victory — his ringtone could be Limp Bizkit and nobody would utter a peep.

Instead, it’s the perfect soundtrack for this Mariners run, which currently sees them up two games to none against the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series. The “Top Gun Anthem” is an epic ballad filled with the sorts of ups and downs that personify an organization that has spent 49 years alternating among the desolation of mediocrity and the heartbreak of underachievement. The only team in Major League Baseball to never to play in a World Series, Seattle is two wins away from capturing its first American League pennant and is heading home to T-Mobile Park for Game 3.

The Mariners’ dominant position is in large part thanks to a 32-year-old infielder whose feats have earned him the right to be called Iceman himself — and yet that’s not the nickname Polanco wears these days.

“He’s George Bonds,” M’s catcher Mitch Garver said.

Yes, Polanco’s alter ego is the anglicized version of his first name and the surname of Major League Baseball’s all-time home run leader. He earned it earlier this season, Garver said, when “everything he hit was 110 [mph] in a gap or over the fence. It was unbelievable.”

Particularly when considering that last winter, Polanco didn’t know whether he would be healthy enough to keep hitting major league pitching. Polanco, who had struggled for years with left knee issues, underwent surgery in October 2024 to repair his patellar tendon. A free agent, Polanco drew limited interest on the market and wound up re-signing with the Mariners for one year and $7.75 million.

“It’s been a journey, man,” Polanco said. “That’s the way I can put it. I wouldn’t say it’s been bad. I wouldn’t say it’s been easy. I think God just prepared me for this year. I’ve been hurt a little bit, so yeah; but now we here, and I’m glad to be back.

“You just have to have faith. You overcome. Come back stronger.”

Polanco’s strength has been on display all October. It first appeared in the second game of Seattle’s division series against the Detroit Tigers when he hit two home runs off ace Tarik Skubal, who is about to win his second consecutive Cy Young Award. It continued three games later in a winner-takes-all Game 5 when he lashed a single into right field in the 15th inning that advanced the Mariners to their first ALCS since 2001. It didn’t stop there, with Polanco’s go-ahead single in the sixth inning of Game 1 against the Blue Jays on Sunday.

Then came Monday’s fifth-inning blast off Toronto reliever Louis Varland, who fed a 98 mph fastball over the plate and watched it leave the bat at 105.2 mph, flying 400 feet to turn a 3-3 tie into a 6-3 Seattle lead.

“He’s always been a great hitter,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “His swing right now is very short. That ball tonight, I wasn’t sure it was going to go out of the ballpark, but I think he’s just getting that kind of spin on it right now where it stays up.”

That is no accident. Polanco arrived in the major leagues with the Minnesota Twins at age 20, a bat-to-ball savant whose ability to hit from both sides of the plate carved him out a regular role with the team.

“He wasn’t George Bonds before,” Garver said. “He was Harry Potter. Because he was a wizard. He’d just make hits appear.”

Polanco found power five years into his career and maxed out with 33 home runs in 2021, but the degradation of his knee sapped the juice in his bat and left him flailing too often at pitches he’d have previously spit on. Last year, in his first season with the Mariners, his numbers cratered, but the organization appreciated Polanco’s even-keeled demeanor and believed fixing his knee would fix his swing too.

The Mariners right. George Bonds was born during a ridiculous first month of the 2025 season when he whacked nine homers in 80 plate appearances. Polanco had embraced the M’s ethos of pulling the ball in the air. Raleigh led MLB with a 1.594 OPS on balls pulled. Third baseman Eugenio Suarez was second at 1.497. Polanco hit 23 of his 26 home runs this season to the pull side, and both of his homers off Skubal (hit from the right side) and the one against Varland (left) were met in front of the plate and yanked over the fence.

“Throughout the years, I hated going to Minnesota just solely because of him,” said shortstop J.P. Crawford, the longest-tenured Mariner. “The guy single-handedly beat us so many times. We all know the type of player he is when he is healthy, and it’s clearly showing right now.”

Never in the game’s 150-year history had a player logged three consecutive game-winning hits after the fifth inning in the postseason. It’s the sort of performance teams need to win pennants — and championships. As brilliant as Raleigh has been in a could-be-MVP campaign and as conflagrant as Julio Rodriguez was in the second half and as dominant as Seattle’s pitching has been en route to this point, winning playoff baseball takes more.

Like, say, a guy who over the winter was an afterthought hitting cleanup and never wavering, even in the highest-leverage situations.

“What’s most impressive is bouncing back after a rough year last year,” said Bryan Woo, who will start Game 3 on Wednesday against Toronto’s Shane Bieber. “Especially for a guy on his second team, back half of his career. To do what he’s doing — get healthy, come back, help the team like he has — is even more impressive than just playing good baseball.”

Playing good baseball helps too. Polanco has helped get Seattle in a place that barely a month ago looked impossible to conceive. From mid-August to early September, the Mariners lost 13 of 18, trailed Houston by 3½ games in the AL West and held a half-game lead on Texas for the final wild-card spot. From there, the Mariners went 17-4, won the West, earned a first-round bye and charted a course for history.

They’re not there. And yet even Polanco admitted that Mariners players can’t ignore the team’s history and recognize what it would mean to get to the World Series.

“Yeah, we think about it,” he said. “We’ve heard it a lot. We know.”

The knowledge hasn’t deterred them. Raleigh is raking. Rodriguez is slugging. Josh Naylor, who grew up in nearby Mississauga, blasted a two-run home run in Game 2. And George Bonds has shown up in style, cold as Iceman, cool as Maverick, perfectly happy to eschew silent mode in favor of loud contact.