Despite having a relatively quiet offseason, Atlanta’s work this spring has been divisive. There are fans who like the workmanlike, no big swings approach to free agency and the draft, and those that think this team should have tried to more aggressively build a talented but hole-ridden roster into a potential big-time NFC contender this year.
That division extends to NFL executives, who did not like Atlanta’s free agency and do not like their draft, per The Athletic. This particular quote seems eerily
similar to one we saw after the first wave of free agency.
“I don’t know what Atlanta is doing yet,” one exec said. “They have talked about raising the floor, but wouldn’t you rather bottom out or raise the ceiling?”
These executives were not complimentary of Avieon Terrell’s size—and some weren’t wowed by his play—and liked but did not love the Zachariah Branch pick. Overall, the sentiment above seems to capture how other executives feel about Atlanta’s offseason; there’s a sense that individual moves are defensible but the team is not pushing their chips in to win big or tearing it down to the studs to try for a more comprehensive rebuild. At least one executive is obviously nonplussed by that.
The counterpoint to that is that the Falcons have been trying to raise the ceiling for three straight seasons now with major expenditures, trades, and draft capital invested and have been stuck in neutral; if the new regime believed they were close they’d presumably have gone in that direction. A teardown, meanwhile, makes a lot more sense when you’re boasting an aging roster with tight margins (see 2021) than when your team is getting younger and has a handful of stars in their primes. Some teams have made that route work, but many others have not.
The counterpoint to that is that the Falcons haven’t looked like they’ve known what they’re doing for a while now, and even the plans that drew approval at the time have infrequently panned out. It’s perfectly reasonable for executives to look at a first-time president of football in Matt Ryan and a franchise with eight straight losing seasons and cast some aspersions on the way they’ve done business this offseason, especially with the middle course they’re looking to chart.
Of course, you do have to understand that executives are far more knowledgeable than us in many ways, but their opinions should still be taken with a bit of a grain of salt. I look back at this 2025 capsule for the Minnesota Vikings as a prime example of that, even if their doubts about Atlanta’s 2024 and 2025 strategies certainly have held up just fine.
“You know what is going to happen?” an exec who wasn’t high on McCarthy asked. “J.J. is going to get banged up, and Howell is going to walk in there and become the next Sam Darnold.”
Really?
“Stop,” another exec said. “There’s no comparison. J.J. will be really good, and the coach (Kevin O’Connell) will make sure he is good.”
Nonetheless, it’s obvious that the new regime is not being extended a lot of wait-and-see grace from the rest of the league, to say nothing of the fanbase. If Matt Ryan, Ian Cunningham, and Kevin Stefanski want next year’s edition of The Athletic’s post-draft scuttlebutt to be more complimentary, they’ll need to show they’ve got this franchise pointed in the right direction this year, but one suspects the gains in 2026 will be modest with the team clearly gearing up to invest more resources in the roster ahead of the 2027 season.
