Every coach hopes to have bulletin board material to ramp up their players heading into the season. They’re pumping their already hyper-competitive athletes with the “nobody believes in you” or the patented “they want you to fail,” without ever actually pinpointing who the “they” in question is. Well, if you’re the Atlanta Falcons, you have a very clear picture of who that usually mysterious force is: Opposing NFL executives.
“If the Falcons produce a solid season, they can accurately say very few
gave them a chance.” The Athletic’s Mike Sando’s final words in his piece about howNFL executives rank the NFC heading into the season. Six anonymous NFL executives gave the Falcons an average rating of 15.3 on a scale from 1-16, only better than the Arizona Cardinals. Three executives had them ranked dead last behind Arizona, but one executive ranking Atlanta 14th over both Arizona and the New York Giants (averaged 13.3, 14th-best average) gave them the edge.
Highlights of The Survey
- The survey had four buckets for teams: Super Bowl Contenders, Division Contenders, Sub-.500 teams, Top-10 pickers. Five of six executives chose the Falcons to be picking in the top 10, while the final executive mercifully doomed the Falcons to a ninth-straight sub-.500 season.
- One executive claims that Jack Strand will “likely wind up with the (quarterback) job,” when discussing the confusion surrounding the position heading into the season.
- One executive is “confused as to where (Kevin Stefanski)’s identity is with the team,” referencing the decision to have Tommy Rees call plays despite Stefanski being deemed an offensive-minded head coach.
- Executives are still not fond of the Falcons’ moves, both in the draft and in the offseason.
Are these NFL executives wrong about the Falcons?
This is not an unfair assessment. The identity of the team is a question mark, and that’s okay to say. This is a new regime that inherited an old regime’s roster and problems, including a major one at quarterback. They have tried to piece together a solution to field a functional team in 2026 by adding Tua Tagovailoa and bringing in guys like Strand and Cooper Rush to offer a floor at the position, but that hasn’t necessarily panned out as it should have.
Tua has looked like the player the Miami Dolphins organization was okay walking away from, even with eating a $55 million cap hit this year and a $43.8 million cap hit next year. Rush has underwhelmed, and Strand, as the executive pointed out, may be the best of the other options that aren’t a Michael Penix Jr., who is coming off his third major ACL injury and repair.
The Falcons are a mess right now, and that’s okay. This year is a year to eat its vegetables, which may end up meaning another sub-.500 season. The goal for this season, unfortunately for fans, isn’t necessarily winning. The goal is to find the big leaks in the roster, so they can be plugged for 2027 and beyond, when the Falcons may be competitive.
It’s going to hurt to hear, but the Falcons are currently in Year 1 of the Detroit Lions’ rebuild in 2021, despite Atlanta also hiring a new coach and general manager in that coaching cycle. The hope is that Atlanta comes out and stays competitive, like those Lions teams did (five of their 13 losses were by a margin of four points or less), while building an environment conducive to winning.
Drake London, Kyle Pitts and Bijan Robinson have never played a playoff game. They have never even gotten a chance to play on a winning team. It will hurt in the short term, but maybe the Falcons taking the growing pains head-on, instead of delusionally making all-in moves as if they were a piece away, like Terry Fontenot so often did, is exactly what they need to build that winning culture again in Atlanta.
