Season openers can be many different things. They can be trials, making teams test their mettle against terrific opponents, as was the case with the Patriots-Seahawks Wednesday night matchup. They can also be divisional rock fights, like the Thursday night battle in Australia between the 49ers and Rams. They can even be cupcakes, like the hapless Browns facing off against a greatly improved Jaguars team.
Or they can be an exorcism of sorts, which is where the Falcons land. Atlanta has a long and sorry
history against the Steelers that we’ll discuss here and Adnan Ikic will cover in more detail over the weekend, but suffice to say it’s history alone that makes bearing Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh seem borderline impossible. These teams are not so far apart in terms of talent that it should be so, but it’s on the Falcons to prove that they’re not just a Steelers punching bag for eternity.
Let’s talk about the matchup ahead.
2026 results for both teams
Your Atlanta Falcons went 8-9 in a very familiar way, falling apart in the middle of the season (with a five game losing streak and seven losses in eight games) and rallying late to win their final four games. Arthur Blank looked at the state of the team, which was sloppy and ruinously bad on special teams to go with an underwhelming offense and better-than-expected defense, and launched both Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot into the sun. That led to the team hiring Ian Cunningham as general manager and Kevin Stefanski as head coach, with Jeff Ulbrich sticking around to run the defense, and an offseason where the team added Tua Tagovailoa to compete with Michael Penix Jr. at quarterback and turned over about a third of the 2025 roster. They’ve now put together eight straight losing seasons and are banking on offensive and special teams improvement without significant regression on defense.
The Steelers, meanwhile, went 10-7 and snuck into the playoffs in the AFC North before an absolutely miserable playoff loss to the Texans, where the defense limited Houston to just 10 points but saw the offense put up just eight points as Aaron Rodgers put together one of the worst games of his long and illustrious career. Mike Tomlin and the team parted ways in the offseason, bringing Mike McCarthy to town.
How the Steelers have changed entering 2026
There’s a familiar core here, particularly in the trenches, but much has changed.
Mike Tomlin finally walked away from the Steelers after 19 seasons, and was replaced by Mike McCarthy. Simultaneously overrated and underrated, McCarthy reunites with Aaron Rodgers after many years away and will hope to upgrade a stagnating offense, but isn’t known for significantly raising a team’s floor when it’s already fairly high. The team traded for Michael Pittman Jr. to boost their receiving corps and drafted a fullback—that’s Steelers football, baby—but otherwise have not made substantial changes to their starting lineup on offense. The theory is that McCarthy can get more out of this group, which isn’t a terrible bet; the problem is that there’s still probably not enough talent in the skill positions for this group to be outstanding.
Defensively, the Steelers look largely unchanged up front, which makes sense given that they’re typically killer in the front seven. They did turn over their secondary significantly, however, adding safeties Rayshawn Jenkins and Jaquan Brisker and cornerback Jamel Dean to the group. It may take some time for that group to gel and both Jenkins and Brisker are not really coverage assets at this stage of their respective careers, but Dean and Joey Porter Jr. are an excellent pair of starting cornerbacks.
Overall, this was not a tear-it-down-to-the-studs offseason because the Steelers don’t really do that. After years of winning seasons that managed to be pretty underwhelming, however, I’m not sure adding McCarthy and a small handful of pieces is going to drag the Steelers to something special in 2026.
What you need to know
This won’t be easy, because playing the Steelers is never easy for the Atlanta Falcons. They’re 2-16-1 against Pittsburgh all-time, with their last victory coming all the way back in 2006. This is simply not an opponent Atlanta handles well.
That said, this is the most vulnerable Steelers team I can remember. Mike McCarthy is new to this team, which features a 43-year-old Aaron Rodgers with one cheek in the podcasting chair, a lackluster supporting cast outside of a couple of killer wide receivers, and a shaky offensive line. The defense is still excellent and special teams is at least solid, even with kicker Chris Boswell coming off a down season by his standards, but the very real question marks around the offense should give the Falcons a fighting chance.
To actually win on the road—and they’ve never won in Pittsburgh, by the way—the Falcons will need to take advantage of every Steelers weakness and limit mistakes. Fumbles and interceptions from Tua or Cooper Rush, to say nothing of the indecision and wilting under pressure that were worrying in preseason and last year with the Dolphins for Tua and in the first week of preseason for Rush, will give an anemic offense more chances. They need to get in a rhythm passing the ball and putting pressure on a secondary that has three new starters and may be without Joey Porter Jr., who is limited with a back injury he’s been dealing with all summer. They need to feed Bijan, naturally, but also Kyle Pitts and Austin Hooper, who are capable of taking advantage of matchups against safeties Jaquan Brisker and Rayshawn Jenkins. The key is going to be meshing Tua’s natural ability to deliver quick, accurate short-to-intermediate throws with yards after the catch from Atlanta’s playmakers, limiting the time Tua has to sit in the pocket in the face of a withering Pittsburgh pass rush. If Rush has to start, the Falcons will keep a similar gameplan, looking to limit the quarterback’s mistakes and only take high percentage shots at a tough Steelers defense.
Defensively, it’s going to be about effectively stopping Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle—and for what it’s worth, the latter averaged under 3 yards per carry against Atlanta in two games in 2025—and pressuring Rodgers. There’s still a dangerous player in the aging quarterback, but he can really only show that off in stretches and in clean pockets. Pittsburgh’s interior offensive line is their weakness—and has looked quite shaky this preseason—even if it’s not an outsized weakness, and the Falcons happen to have a deep group of defensive linemen to rotate and an attack-first philosophy under defensive line coach Nate Ollie. Rodgers has increasingly struggled under pressure as he’s aged, and he’s particularly susceptible to getting off-rhythm and missing throws when he’s forced to roll out instead of being allowed to step up and put more oomph into his throws. Interior pressure will wreck Pittsburgh’s day, and the Falcons will need it.
We have little idea of what to expect from these Falcons with a whole new coaching staff and a lot of new faces, but the keys to winning this game are easy to see: Limit those mistakes, attack Pittsburgh’s outsized weaknesses, and lean heavily on your playmakers. If they can beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh for the first time ever, they’ll certainly have our attention going forward.
