Falcons

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly & The Falcons

Sean McVay laces up Ty Simpson’s cleats for the rookie’s NFL debut. Jaxson Dart finds concussion protocols "puzzling." Davis Webb gets canonized by the Denver media. And the Falcons … the poor, poor Falcons.

That's not an AI Slop arm coming out of Tua's right elbow. There's a Broncos defender behind him! You can see the tip of his helmet behind Tua's left shoulder! But the idea that Tua is sprouting extra arms is growing on me. Maybe one of them can throw hard.

Sean McVay laces up Ty Simpson’s cleats for the rookie’s NFL debut. Jaxson Dart finds concussion protocols hard to wrap his head around. Davis Webb gets canonized by the Denver media. And the Falcons … the poor, poor Falcons.

What follows are preseason notes for most NFL teams. If your favorite team is not mentioned, that might be for the best.

Arizona Cardinals

Jeremiyah Love started Thursday’s game slowly, with two carries for five yards and a two-yard catch against Raiders (mostly) starters. Love stayed in the lineup after most starters exited, putting on a show in the second quarter: runs of 16, 14, 9 and 8 yards, a short reception to get the ball close to the goal line, and a battery of jukes, spins and hurdles.

One of the Cardinals announcers suggested bubble-wrapping Love until the season opener after one of Love’s joystick-mashing second quarter runs. That suggestion came too late: Love “tweaked” his ankle late in his Friday appearance and is dealing with “soreness” which will sideline him for a week. "A week," in this case, sounds like code for "We're not sure how long." (The injury was reclassified as a high ankle sprain on Sunday. Love will be out longer than a week.)

Let’s hope Love is OK, because he will be a blast to watch. And let’s really hope his second-quarter workload wasn’t the result of the Cardinals trying to generate positive headlines about a controversial draft decision.

Second-round guard Chase Bisontis tore an MCL in the third quarter on Thursday. He will need surgery and may be out for the year. Bisontis was behind Isaiah Adams on a flimsy depth chart. The Cardinals are the only NFL team that can out-injury the 49ers.

Jalen Brooks, who caught three passes for 99 yards in the Hall of Fame Game (including both of Carson Beck’s epoch-defining deep shots), went 6-52-1 on Thursday. Brooks, a former Cowboys bit player who caught three passes and returned some kicks for the Cardinals in 2025, is a burly receiver who may get stuck behind Kendrick Bourne in the burly receiver role.

Mike LaFleur probably smuggled a McVay playbook out of Los Angeles with him. The Cardinals offense was full of tight formations with Jacoby Brissett or Gardner Minshew under center on Thursday. I didn’t see much three-tight end stuff, but two tight ends and a burly Bourne/Brooks type can do anything three tight ends can do, often better.

Lots of teams lined up with tight formations and under-center quarterbacks this weekend. It’s funny how much the trendy new Rams-flavored offense looks like a default Safe Mode offense. Why, if I didn’t know better, I would swear that it’s all just a bunch of gussied-up, decades-old Mike Shanahan tactics, and that teams trying to run a 2025 Rams system without 2025 Rams personnel are in for a rude surprise.

Atlanta Falcons

I cannot remember seeing a team which played its starters in a preseason game look as bad as the Falcons looked on Friday night.

Tua Tagovailoa often looks like a dead-armed junkballer, but he looked like a dead-armed junkballer who couldn’t field snaps properly and plans to throw the ball away at the first sign of trouble. The Falcons defense could not cover Courtland Sutton and allowed Jarrett Stidham to play like he was wearing a red no-contact jersey. Cooper Rush entered the game and immediately threw an interception to Riley Moss; Rush later added a pick-6. On both sides of the ball, the Falcons starters and top backups looked disorganized, even by preseason standards, and a little disinterested.

The NFL announced edge rusher James Pearce’s eight-game suspension hours before kickoff. Jalon Walker is out for the year with an ACL tear. Michael Penix is talking himself into a redshirt year instead of battling Tagovailoa the way I talk myself out of flights with a layover. Oh, and all the big-name offensive veterans just got paid, which can do funny things to the competitive spirit. The Falcons may be facing their annual doom spiral early, instead of waiting for November or (in the good old days) the second half of the Super Bowl.

Don’t worry folks: the Falcons may collapse this year, but Kevin Stefanski will win his third Coach of the Year award for getting them to 9-8 next year.

Buffalo Bills

BREAKING KEON COLEMAN NEWS (WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP)

I love how lame this siren looks. It's actually a bubblegum machine. By Lee Cannon via Wikimedia Commons.

Coleman caught a touchdown pass at the end of a Josh Allen scramble against the Panthers starters on Saturday afternoon. Coleman started the game in the slot, with Khalil Shakir and DJ Moore as the other receivers. Coleman also converted on fourth-and-three with a short catch from Kyle Allen in the second quarter, and could be seen blocking his tail off on a Mecole Hardman end-around and a Ray Davis screen.

Tune in later this week when Brandon Beane declares himself the Grand Marshal of the Keon Coleman Day Parade!

Coleman indeed looked pretty good. Shakir and Moore looked great. The Bills outmatched the Panthers on both sides of the ball in a full quarter’s worth of starter-on-starter action, though Josh Allen took more hits than he should have and needed a facemask call on a third-and-long sack to extend a drive. It was very on-brand Bills football before the silly-stringers entered the game: the opponent couldn’t stop them, but they did their best to stop themselves.

Cleveland Browns

The more Deshaun Watson played on Saturday, the worse he looked. Watson completed some short timing passes in his early series with the Browns starters against the 1.5th-string Bears defense. In later series, Watson got stripped while throwing late from a collapsing pocket, nearly threw an interception before halftime and looked indecisive and skittish when not throwing to his first read.

Watson also doesn’t have much mobility left, as evidenced by Bears backups chasing him out of bounds after a short scramble. You lose the skills you don’t use.

From a football standpoint, the current version of Watson reminds me of Mitch Trubisky. Both were taken in the 2017 draft and remained NFL starters through 2020. Both reached the playoffs twice before essentially disappearing for five seasons for different reasons. Watson was better than Trubisky at their peaks, but that was so long ago that it’s nearly irrelevant. Watching Watson deteriorate once he was asked to do more than execute journeyman-veteran basics on Saturday was a lot like watching Trubisky in preseasons past.

So if you are looking for a reduced-baggage way of appraising the Browns once Watson is named their starter, imagine that they are naming Trubisky the starter, and then set your expectations for the 2026 season and beyond accordingly.

Shedeur Sanders entered the game after halftime and … look, I am sorry. I want to believe. But it’s all recess, all the time with Sanders. Just watching him hold the ball too far away from his body while he hops around a collapsing pocket makes me cringe. If that’s what Sanders’ fundamentals look like, in his second year, while hypothetically competing for a starting job, then it’s never gonna happen.

In brighter news, first round wide receiver KC Concepcion had a phenomenal debut: three short catches in traffic, a 31-yard punt return, and a tackle-breaking touchdown on a jet sweep. “Buy all of the stock you possibly can on this young player,” wrote Anthony Moeglin at Browns Wire.

Sound advice. Just as long as it’s Browns stock.