TankWatch: Atlanta Falcons

Are you looking for a sign that modern civilization has lost its way, but you just can’t seem to find one, no matter how hard you look?

Well, here’s a tearing of the sixth seal for you: the Atlanta Falcons are scheduled to play three prime time games over the next three weeks. The Falcons visit the Packers on Thursday night, then visit the Saints for Monday Night Football in Week 4, then host the Ravens on Sunday night in Week 5.

Three prime time Falcons games? Has Celebrity Wheel of Fortune run out of hangman clues? Is Tyler Sheridan fresh out of new ripoffs of Dynasty? Can’t someone whip up a few more country music award shows to fill timeslots? Where’s Nebraska volleyball when you need it?

A three-week nationally-televised Falcons Craptathalon is just another symptom of an empire in decline, like Fourth of July spectaculars that turn into monster truck rallies, and Paramount celebrating Star Trek’s 60th anniversary by cancelling all future series. Remember America’s glory days, when we would have gotten Texans-Colts on Thursday night, possibly wearing monochromatic Day-Glo uniforms? Now, we’re forced to watch the one team that even the worst of us don’t truly deserve.

Granted, Falcons-Saints is meant to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Saints’ return to the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. I get it, but it’s also in dubious taste. There must be a better way to commemorate a devastating national tragedy, still in living memory, than by treating it like a cross between Live Aid and a Pop-Tarts Bowl. Yes, I remember being inspired by the pregame performance by U2 and Green Day back in 2006. This time around, we’ll probably get Kid Rock and Rascal Flatts. 

There’s speculation that NBC will flex the Week 5 Falcons-Ravens game, replacing it with Niners-Seahawks, Bears-Packers or an ice dancing competition from Turkmenistan. I hope NBC leaves Falcons-Ravens right where it is. The Eagles face the Jaguars in London at 9:30 AM Philly time that Sunday. I plan to be at the bar by brunchtime. I could use a late game that readers like you might prefer that I not write about.

The 2026 Falcons, you see, aren’t just bad. They are hopeless in a way that activates deep-seated anxieties. The only non-excruciating way to watch them right now is to TankWatch them.

The Falcons Story So Far

The Falcons are somehow getting worse.

As you either recall or have deeply repressed, the Falcons were the NFL’s best team on February 5th, 2017 at around 10 PM Eastern. Then came The Deluge. The organization spent the last decade sliding slowly into a state halfway between institutional mediocrity and existential despair. They sleepwalked through whole seasons in a semi-catatonic daze. They were rarely dramatically self-destructive like the Jets or Browns, merely quietly desperate. They kept up appearances. They hovered around .500. But every year, the burden of their guttering pointlessness grew more crippling. 

This offseason, something finally snapped within them.

The Falcons finished 8-9 in 2025. They also finished 8-9 in 2024. They finished 7-10 in three straight years before that. But last year’s Falcons showed some flickers of life, winning their last four games and mounting an NFL-caliber pass rush for the first time since 2017. They upset the Bills and Rams. They would have reached the playoffs if not for a pair of midseason overtime losses. 

Owner Arthur Blank didn’t care. He fired head coach Raheem Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot. He swept executive-behind-the-curtain Rich McKay from his giant spider web in the middle of team headquarters and out the door. 

It was time for major changes in Flowery Branch. Not to the roster, of course; let’s not get hasty. Major behind-the-scenes and coaching changes.

Being a mediocre rich guy even by NFL ownership standards, Blank hired two different “consulting firms” to conduct coach and executive searches. These well-connected corporate headhunters, who are totally not just a bunch of suit-fillers in basement boiler rooms, combed the galaxy to discover:

• An obscure former Falcons employee named Matt Ryan; 
• Kevin Stefanski, recently fired by the Browns for failing to save the Kobayashi Maru from the Romulan Neutral Zone (Happy Birthday, Star Trek!); and 
• Ian Cunningham, a rising star in the executive ranks who became smart when Caleb Williams became good. 

Having done what any blogger on a deadline stringing together SEO-friendly keywords about the Falcons coach/GM search would do, the consultants scurried away with suitcases full of Blank Bucks to rename their agencies and change their URLs so Carlie Irsay-Gordon won’t realize she is hiring the exact same con artists come January.

The new regime then put their unique stamp on the roster by spending tens of millions of dollars on extensions for players drafted by the old regime. Brilliant! 

In fairness, the newcomers had few other options. The Falcons traded their 2026 first-round pick as part of a 2025 draft-day gambit to select edge rushers James Pearce and Jalon Walker. Pearce got arrested for (allegedly) doing terrible things in March. Walker got injured in August. 

Oh, and the Falcons already had a young franchise quarterback on the roster. He was just rehabbing a November ACL injury. What were the chances that would turn into a season-defining saga?

Leadership Structure

Matt Ryan’s official title is President of Football. It’s the kind of title preteen boys give each other in their treehouse fort: Booger, you get to be President of Moldy 1980s Playboys. It’s a give-up-on-life title awarded by a burned-out CEO eating cereal and drinking Scotch in their pajamas in mid-afternoon. “President of Football” makes it sound like Ryan was hired as a fall guy for an organization that’s about to get raided by the Securities and Exchange Commission. We’re not guilty, Your Honor. We were only following orders from our President of Embezzlement. 

Ryan’s El Presidente qualifications boil down to the fact that Blank already paid him $270 million to play quarterback for 15 years, so what’s a few dollars more? 

Tom Brady is similarly unqualified to run the Raiders, but Brady has the good grace to strut across the globe like a bored, foppish aristocrat, making it obvious that he’s just using the Raiders as a Lego set. I get the impression that Ryan sits behind a desk in a three-piece suit, writing memos that no one reads and wondering what the little clear buttons on his office phone do.

Back when I was a teacher, there were always a few colleagues who volunteered to teach the worst classes: Math for Glue Huffers, Teaching to the Previous Standardized Test, Woodshop Without Tools. Some of these colleagues genuinely wanted to minister to the needs of at-risk/underserved populations, of course. But many just wanted an easy gig with zero accountability: if the classroom didn’t burn down, it was a win; if Dimebag Dustin got accepted to county college, it was a playoff win.

Kevin Stefanski is a lot like those not-so-ambitious teachers. He’s attracted to terrible jobs as if they were a stack of 1980s Playboys. 

Stefanski now possesses a 45-58 head coaching record but two Coach of the Year awards. All of his failures are blamed on his organizations, quarterbacks and rosters, with much merit. His two 11-win seasons, on the other hand, are hailed as feats of tactical wizardry and leadership.

The NFL is run by men who excel at deflecting blame while milking every drop of credit from meager success, so Stefanski is still hot stuff in the coaching ranks, because game recognizes game.

I have no idea if Stefanski is a better-than-baseline coach or not, but I have my suspicions. The NFL rewards replacement-level competence with a Wild Card season every leap year or so, thanks to strength of schedule, draft order and the salary cap. Stefanski’s pre-Browns qualifications boil down to a long stint with the Vikings which ended with one season as offensive coordinator. His 2019 Vikings had Kirk Cousins, Stefon Diggs, Adam Thielen and Dalvin Cook on the roster, all at or near their primes. They ranked 14th in net offensive yards and 11th in offensive DVOA. 

Stefanski’s coordinators are Tommy Rees, who followed him from the Browns, and Jeff Ulbrich, a holdover from last year who was also a Falcons linebackers coach before/during/after The Deluge. Neither Rees nor Ulbrich is a threat to Stefanski’s authority; Ulbrich is an easy-to-sacrifice pawn. Again: game recognizes game.

Cunningham is trapped between Archduke Football and Kevin the Cool Shop Teacher, making it hard to get a read on him. He didn’t even get a first-round pick to personalize the roster like an air freshener to dangle from the rearview mirror. At least Brady factotum John Spytek gets to swan around the office and pretend he really runs the Raiders for about 320 days per year. 

Quarterback Situation

Michael Penix will start his first game of the season in Green Bay on Thursday night. I'm not sure how excited he is about it.

Penix has just recovered from the third torn ACL of his young life. Humans, as you know, generally only have two ACLs. Penix suffered his most recent tear on November 16th of 2025. Every stage of his recovery has lasted a week or month longer than expected. 

The Falcons expected Penix to compete with Tua Tagoavailoa in training camp. Penix eventually scheduled the doctor’s appointment that would clear him for full-squad practices in late August. 

The Falcons awarded Penix the starting job anyway. Penix needed more time to get ready. Tua got hurt. That didn’t change Penix’s timetable. Cooper Rush, signed on July 29th, started the first two games. Penix, who raved about his “amazing” new ACL on August 12th (doctors ripped it off a totaled Lamborghini) and returned to full-squad practices before the final preseason game, wasn’t even active. 

Look, I get it. Penix has spent a large chunk of his life rehabbing serious injuries, which is the sort of experience that will make someone listen to their body, mind and heart a little more carefully. Furthermore, young folks these days don’t believe in rushing back to work. That’s a healthier attitude than, say, dragging your ass into the office to push paper around with a 101-degree fever. But Penix has chosen a hypercompetitive profession run by unapologetic Boomers who expect football players to act the way Jaxson Dart acted on Monday night: this MCL tear is merely a flesh wound. 

You’d better believe the Falcons’ patience with their medical-redshirt perma-freshman was wearing mighty thin. I expected the team to wait until after Thursday night to finally nudge Penix onto the field after their mini-bye. Sunday’s embarrassing effort against the Panthers accelerated the Falcons’ timeline. Someone may have gently reminded Penix that, after so much recent managerial turnover and so many contract extensions, there is only one job in Flowery Branch right now that is really at stake. 

Penix’s franchise-quarterback qualifications are rather flimsy. He was benched late in a Week 3 shutout at the hands of the Panthers in 2025, then missed a Week 8 loss to the Dolphins with a knee injury that looked a little like a trial benching. He wilted at the end of a Week 9 loss to the Patriots, later claiming that Patriots defenders distracted him by nefariously clapping on the final drive. 

Penix spent most of his 2024 season watching Kirk Cousins, only finally taking the field after Cousins' lingering Achilles tendon issues reached the point where he could barely execute a 7-step drop anymore. The 2024 Falcons endured a 38-6 Week 11 loss, then waited through their Week 12 bye, then STILL started gimpy Cousins against the Chargers and Vikings before finally turning to Penix.

So Penix doesn’t exactly radiate hard-nosed glass-eater energy, even when both his spirit and flesh are willing to take the field. His statistics are decent, but a quarterback with Bijan Robinson and Drake London at his disposal should post decent statistics against opponents like the Commanders and the NFC South. Penix has a lot to prove. And three straight nationally televised games in which to prove it.

Tua Tagovailoa should probably be placed in a nice, safe climate-controlled dust-free terrarium at this point in his life. Tua has ossified like a vampire on the beach over the last two years. A vase containing the Dead Sea Scrolls is more likely to survive a football game than he is. 

If Tagovailoa played baseball, he would be a LOOGY, one of those soft-tossing lefthanded relief pitchers managers used to send onto the field to face lefty sluggers like Ryan Howard, then return to the bullpen after eight or nine pitches. 

Major league baseball changed its rules to speed up games and save managers from themselves: many LOOGYs were terrible, but managers don’t understand statistics enough to realize that the lefty/lefty pitching advantage was rarely worth replacing a talented righthander with a 41-year old sinkerballer with a dad bod. It was the baseball equivalent of going for it on fourth-and-10 from your own 20-yard line because “analytics.” 

Tua threw like Jamie Moyer threw in his 40s for most of his Dolphins career. In the preseason, Tua threw like Moyer (now 63) probably throws now. Fortunately for the Falcons, Tua suffered an oblique injury from standing too close to a particularly loud subwoofer.

Cooper Rush is currently the worst starting quarterback in the NFL. In fairness to Rush, he’s probably still a top-10 third stringer.

Jack Strand made a cameo in Week 2, going 8-of-15 for 59 yards and an interception in mop-up duty. The Falcons hope Strand can be their Tyson Bagent: a UDFA from a College of the Pointed Firs-type program who demonstrates game-managerial competence if/when called upon. The Bears are currently hoping that Tyson Bagent doesn’t have to be their Tyson Bagent.

What’s Going Right

• Bijan Robinson.

What’s Going Wrong

You read the quarterback section, right? 

The Falcons offense currently ranks:

• 29th in the NFL in yards per game (262.1).
• 31st in yards per play (4.2).
• 32nd in passing yards per game (123.5).
• 32nd in interception rate (9.3%).
• 30th in third-down conversions (24.0%).
• The Falcons offense has not yet reached the red zone this season.

The Falcons defense is above average in many categories, but the Steelers offense is dreadful, and the Panthers began munching the clock midway through the second quarter. 

Building Blocks

James Pearce (suspended for eight games) and Jalon Walker (ACL tear on August 4th) combined for 16.0 sacks as rookies. They could quickly revitalize the Falcons pass rush when both are back on the field in 2027. 

Rookie Zachariah Branch has shown promise as a returner and slot jitterbug, though his best play (a long kickoff return against the Steelers) was nullified by a penalty. Fellow rookie Avieon Terrell, brother of teammate and veteran cornerback A.J. Terrell, has held his own as a pesky slot defender through two games. Fourth-round pick Kendal Daniels is starting at linebacker and playing adequately.

Bijan, Drake London and Kyle Pitts are technically still young enough to count as “building blocks.” Bijan’s warranty will probably be voided by the time the Falcons solve their quarterback situation, however, making him a textbook example of the perils of investing a high first-round pick on even an outstanding running back. London’s scouting report boils down to He’d be an All-Pro with better quarterbacking, which is starting to sound a lot like special pleading in his fifth NFL season. 

Pitts signed a $36 million extension in the offseason and has caught exactly one pass through two weeks. He has played 64 of 129 Falcons offensive snaps, a few less than fellow tight end Charlie Woerner, who can, you know, block and stuff. Literally everyone in the human race saw this coming. 

Future Assets

Cunningham and/or Ryan backloaded the living hell out of the Bijan/London/Pitts extensions. The big-money years on these contracts don’t kick in until 2028 and 2029. So the Falcons have $115 million in paper cap space for 2027. 

Safety Jessie Bates and center Ryan Neuzil are the best players on the roster set for free agency next offseason. Neuzil should be easy to extend or re-sign. Bates may chase top dollar or a ring elsewhere.

The Falcons possess all of their picks in the 2027 draft until the sixth round.

Rebuilding Plan

No installment of TankWatch would be complete without a foolproof plan to fix the hopeless team.

Tough Love for Michael Penix

The communication to Penix must be clear: he’s still being evaluated. Shutout losses to middleweight opponents are no longer acceptable. Fourth-quarter mistakes can no longer be blamed on startling noises. Further injuries, unavoidable as they may be, will force the organization to act in its best interests.

If Penix doesn’t want the Falcons to draft his successor, he’ll have to play his way out of that scenario.

Draft a QB

Unless Penix cries Shazam! and becomes an indestructible superhero, the Falcons should go back to the well. Waiting another year because Penix squeaks out some decent analytics in a handful of starts against NFC South foes with Bijan propping him up would be a huge mistake. 

Save Bijan

Stefanski got Bijan out of the Panthers game midway through the third quarter. That’s the right idea. The worst thing the Falcons can do is force Bijan to compete for a rushing title while the Falcons compete for last place. They will need him in 2027 and 2028. Down by two scores? Get Brian Robinson in the game.

Spend Those Blank Bucks!

Next year’s roster will feature Bijan, London, Pearce, Walker, the Terrell brothers, some pretty good offensive linemen, and (sure) Pitts, plus some combination of Penix/challenger/journeyman at quarterback. If they reinforce the offensive line and add some beef in the middle of the defense, the Falcons could really have something!

Of course, the Falcons have been following that train of thought around in circles for years. The Bijan & Friends contract extensions have left them with few other options, however, so the only way out may be through. 

Bottom Line

The Falcons are the sort of team TankWatch was designed for. They are in position to finish in last place, select in the Top 5 of the 2027 draft, grab a much-coveted quarterback prospect, surround the newcomer with established playmakers, and escape a decade-long shame spiral. It may be their best-case scenario. Penix’s return, in that context, is something of a mixed blessing.

Penix deserves a fair shot. I will keep an open mind over the next three weeks. But I am skeptical. There's never been any urgency, on anyone's part, to get him onto an NFL field, and the tribulations of his 2025 half-season have been memory-holed. He may not have the knees or mentality for his profession.

Back-to-back nationally televised road games, in Lambeau and an emotionally-charged Superdome, will teach us a lot about Penix and the Falcons. If he shines, then crisis averted. If not, the Falcons should at least be terrible enough to draft a suitable replacement. Better that than another 8-9 finish in a midmajor conference despite a handful of big-name superstars who deserve better.