The Atlanta Falcons are now 3-7 and on pace for their worst finish since 2020.
The Atlanta Falcons are on track for a top-10 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft … which goes to the Los Angeles Rams.
Quarterback Michael Penix Jr. has yet to prove himself worthy of a second contract.
There’s a distinct discomfort in watching a gambler push past the boundaries of what’s advisable in pursuit of a substantial payoff.
It’s the same unease that one might have felt in recent years while watching the Atlanta Falcons try to cut against the grain to build themselves into a contender.
No one could accuse general manager Terry Fontenot of adhering to a herd mentality in his five seasons serving as the organization’s architect. Atlanta became the first team in the common draft era to select offensive skill-position players with top-eight selections in four consecutive drafts from 2021-24 with tight end Kyle Pitts, wide receiver Drake London, running back Bijan Robinson and quarterback Michael Penix Jr.
That core was put in place to set them up for a breakthrough in 2025, with first-round picks Jalon Walker and James Pearce Jr. brought on to jolt a pass rush that had languished for some time. An end to a seven-year playoff drought – tied for the second-longest active streak – seemed within reach.
‘We’re in a better place now, team-wise, coaching-wise, totally across the board than we’ve been in a number of years,’ Falcons owner Arthur Blank said in late July. ‘And so we were close last year, didn’t finish the way we wanted to finish, for sure. … And so, I look forward to the season and a different set of results at the end of the season.’
Six months later, things don’t look discernibly different – at least in any positive way – for a perpetually flailing franchise.
With Sunday’s 30-27 loss to the Carolina Panthers, the Falcons are now 3-7 and hurtling toward potentially their worst finish since 2020, the year prior to Fontenot’s hiring. An eighth consecutive losing ledger looks increasingly likely, with a push to the playoffs bordering on impossible.
Unlike in recent years, however, Atlanta can’t expect to solve its problems merely by adding, subtracting or shifting a key piece or two. The Falcons are without their 2026 first-round pick – which is on track to be a top-10 selection – after coughing it up in April’s trade to acquire Pearce, leaving limited avenues for any potential personnel overhaul. Penix, who will miss the rest of the season with a knee injury suffered Sunday, will head into his third season as an unreliable entity behind center. And coach Raheem Morris’ seat could be warming up, even if it doesn’t scorch him by the end of the campaign.
Getting to this point, however, entailed a series of interwoven miscalculations.
Falcons’ NFL draft trade for James Pearce has become a debacle
Atlanta’s most recent flub might also prove to be its most consequential in the near term.
The Falcons’ decision to give up their 2026 first-round pick to the Los Angeles Rams looked suspect at the time, with vanishingly small odds that the selection would be as late in the order as the No. 26 overall choice used on Pearce. Now, however, Atlanta figures to be conveying a pick somewhere in the top 10 – and possibly just its second top-five selection since 2009.
Much of modern drafting has centered on a reduction of ego, with many of the most successful franchises opting to load up on assets rather than go all in on a single player. The Falcons, however, seem to consistently operate in defiance of that trend, with April’s decision marking another bit of hubris.
‘You know with trades, it always gets to that point where you have to weigh out what you’re actually doing and what you’re doing it for,’ Fontenot said in May. ‘We look at the trade charts and all that stuff, but at some point, you have to look at who’s the player and what’s going to be. What are we really getting, and is it worth it? That’s what you really have to do at some point. When you have that kind of conviction and belief in the player, then that’s when you’re willing to do it – and we do.’
If conviction alone could save general managers, though, then no one would have to worry about their job security at the end of the season.
Pearce, for his part, has exhibited plenty of promise in his debut season. He has 22 pressures on the year, putting him behind only No. 3 overall pick Abdul Carter among rookies.
Yet trading major draft capital for non-quarterbacks is almost always bad business in the NFL. Landing the next Jared Verse or T.J. Watt isn’t simply a matter of chasing one down in the middle-to-late first round.
Yes, the Falcons have transformed themselves from ranking 31st in sacks last year with 34 to already bagging 34, putting them within reach of breaking the single-season franchise record of 55. But getting to this point has required a group effort amplified by a blitz-rate of 44.3%. There’s no one player propping this group up, and Pearce – who ranks sixth on the team with 2 1/2 sacks – has a long way to go before he can be that figure.
And with the loss to the Panthers, the Falcons became the first team in the Super Bowl era to have 18 or more sacks in a three-game span and still lose all three contests. Atlanta hounded Bryce Young for five sacks, but the quarterback ended his downfield passing woes by throwing for a career-high 448 yards – 314 of which came on plays on which he held he ball for more than 2.5 seconds, according to Next Gen Stats.
It’s clear there’s more at play here than Walker or Pearce are capable of solving.
The Michael Penix Jr. problem
The trade for Pearce might go down as one of the more costly missteps of Fontenot’s tenure, but the decision to draft Penix figures to be his defining move.
The stunning investment with the No. 8 overall pick in 2024 drew substantial scorn given that Atlanta had handed Kirk Cousins a four-year, $180 million contract one month earlier. The Falcons’ timeline, however, was thrown off when they handed the reins to Penix for the final three games of the season as the veteran unraveled down the stretch.
The gambit might have paid off had Penix established himself as clearly being worthy of a second contract. So far, he hasn’t.
With ample support around him, the second-year signal-caller has been plagued by the same problems that were evident in his college career. His ball placement has been volatile, with his 60.1% completion rate ranking 29th among all quarterbacks. He too often eschews the middle of the field entirely, heightening the degree of difficulty for Atlanta’s offense to stay on track. And the latest injury could be the fifth season-ending ailment of his career after a series of shoulder and knee setbacks at Indiana before his transfer to Washington.
That’s a problematic trajectory for any young quarterback. Penix, however, will be 26 in May and should be somewhere closer to Bo Nix, his fellow 2024 draft classmate who also had an extensive college career that only truly took off once he transferred to the Pacific Northwest. But while Nix has developed into an accomplished if imperfect leader of a playoff-ready outfit, Penix remains an unknown.
Moving on from Penix after just 12 starts would be a stunning outcome that might only come alongside the Falcons fully wiping the slate clean, which hasn’t been Blank’s style. If they continue on with him as expected, though, there aren’t a ton of clear answers for the organization heading into 2026.
Is this a Terry Fontenot problem or a Raheem Morris issue?
Regardless of how the blame is divvied up – both parties look culpable, though Fontenot has been around longer to shape things – each side is going to have to deal with the fallout.
Morris has made it clear he believes the buck stops with him.
“You have to find a way to win games,” Morris said Sunday after Atlanta lost its fifth consecutive contest. “It definitely is on me. There is no such thing as a losing team, only a losing leader. I’m the leader, and we lost.”
The CEO-style head coach appears to have kept the team united, with Cousins saying there haven’t been any fissures in the locker room amid the skid. Yet Morris is still overseeing an unquestionably failing operation.
If both the coach and Fontenot return for 2026, they’ll have to continue paying the toll for various blunders from the past two years.
Upgrading an offense that ranks 27th in scoring (19.5 points per game) and 29th in third-down conversion rate (33.9%) won’t be easy. Without that first-round selection, Atlanta will have scant options for boosting a receiving corps that has pretty much solely been the Drake London show. Fontenot’s various bold plays have left the Falcons with just $4.1 million in projected cap space for 2026, according to Over The Cap, though they can free up $35 million by designating Cousins as a post-June 1 cut. Regardless, Atlanta might end up losing more on the open market than it brings in with Pitts and running back Tyler Allgeier set to become free agents.
Is offensive coordinator Zac Robinson the figure to develop Penix and lead a turnaround? His pistol attack has more closely resembled a squirt gun through two years. Amid Morris’ proclamations that Bijan Robinson is ‘the best player in football,’ the Falcons rank just 19th in expected points added per rush in 2025.
But if the Falcons opt for another change in the assistant ranks – they fired receivers coach Ike Hilliard in September after a shutout loss to the Panthers – in lieu of a more drastic shake-up, they might be hard-pressed to find someone capable of cleaning everything up. Any accomplished play-caller or promising offensive mind likely would have doubts about joining a regime that clearly would be under fire heading into 2026.
Of course, a good deal of the problems point back to Blank. Though he’s been far more patient than many of his peers in the ownership ranks, the delusion that the Falcons were on the precipice of a postseason breakthrough might trace back to him. After all, Atlanta was the lone team to interview Bill Belichick in January 2024 before thinking better of the flirtation and pivoting to Morris. Since then, the team has repeatedly embraced the notion that it was one or two key contributors away from leveling up.
Now, a wide-ranging assessment of where the franchise really stands looks overdue. And it might be too late to undergo it without a full-scale reset.
The Falcons will play out the rest of their season as the rival Panthers – who have been far less discerning at the top levels amid a series of nearly annual reboots – try to leave Atlanta in sole possession of that playoff drought that stands second only to that of the New York Jets. Yet the greatest pain might come with the ‘Monday Night Football’ spotlight in Week 17 against the Rams, who can bolster their own playoff push while bettering the draft position of the Falcons’ pick they’re set to receive by handing the team yet another loss.
And in doing so, they’ll also provide a reminder of just how far off Atlanta really is from where the organization envisioned it would soon be.
This post appeared first on USA TODAY
