The Atlanta Falcons are heading into training camp with plenty of outside doubt hanging over them, but there are real reasons to think 2026 could look a lot different.
DraftKings has the Falcons at 6.5 wins, and ESPN’s roster rankings placed them tied for 29th in the league, with only two teams below them. That kind of skepticism is hard to miss.
Still, Atlanta won eight games for the second straight year in 2025, then tore things down and started over in a lot of places. Owner Arthur Blank and Falcons fans had every reason to feel the team had badly underachieved over the last three seasons.
Now the roster has a new look from top to bottom, and that gives Atlanta a fresh path toward ending an eight-year playoff drought.
One of the easiest places to start is special teams, because last year’s results were brutal. The Falcons finished last in both kickoff coverage and kickoff returns in 2025, and they were 24th in field goal percentage.
That’s a hard floor to repeat. Atlanta used a third-round pick on Zachariah Branch, a dangerous returner in college, and added Nick Folk after he led the NFL in field goal accuracy each of the last three seasons with the New York Jets.
Folk did that in MetLife Stadium, and now he gets to kick half his games in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with road trips to Charlotte, New Orleans, and Tampa instead of Buffalo and Boston.
The coaching change also gives Atlanta a different feel. No matter what someone thinks of Stefanski’s time in Cleveland, he still won NFL Coach of the Year twice.
He’s one of 14 coaches to win it more than once, and the only Browns head coach to take home the award in the last 50 seasons, with Forrest Gregg doing it in 1976. That’s a very different resume from Morris, who had issues with clock management and opened his tenure with three shaky coordinator hires.
Morris moved quickly from defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake to Jeff Ulbrich, and Ulbrich remains in Atlanta. Stefanski is already ahead of that curve.
There’s also more to like about the offense than the national rankings suggest. ESPN’s roster list had the Falcons at 29th, but Bill Barnwell ranked their offensive skill players fourth in the league.
That side of the ball is built around Bijan Robinson, Drake London and Kyle Pitts, three straight top-10 picks from 2021 through 2023 who have mostly delivered. Robinson is arguably the NFL’s top running back, London continues to climb the top 100 lists, and Pitts finished with the second-most yards among tight ends last season.
Robinson and London have produced regardless of who has been throwing them the ball. Robinson led the league in scrimmage yards last season, while London was on pace to be a top-five receiver before missing time. If the quarterback situation settles down and the offense gets more aggressive, that young core should have a chance to do even more damage.
That quarterback situation is a little different than it looked a year ago. At that point, the Falcons were hoping Michael Penix Jr. would be the answer while Kirk Cousins was asking for a trade.
Expectations around Penix have cooled, but Atlanta upgraded from Cousins by signing Tua Tagovailoa to a one-year deal. Tagovailoa posted the worst passer rating of his career last season, yet his 88.5 mark still topped Cousins’ 84.8.
A 28-year-old Tagovailoa with something to prove looks a lot better than a 37-year-old Cousins waiting around for a release.
Whether it’s Tagovailoa or Penix, the job comes with the same demands: score more and protect the football better. Neither quarterback did enough of that last season.
New general manager Ian Cunningham also took a practical approach in free agency. He didn’t act like the Falcons were one splash signing away from a Super Bowl run.
Instead, he spread the money around and tried to raise the floor of the entire 53-man roster. That meant replacing linebacker Kaden Elliss with Christian Harris and Channing Tindall in free agency, then adding Kendal Daniels and Harold Perkins Jr. in the draft.
It also meant addressing the loss of defensive tackle David Onyemata by trading for Maason Smith, signing Da’Shawn Hand and Chris Williams, and drafting Anterio Thompson.
That kind of depth matters if injuries hit, and it matters on special teams too. More talent throughout the roster should help in more places than one.
The big question is simple: how high can the ceiling go if the quarterback play is merely average or better? The Falcons have one of the most volatile profiles in the league. The roster is good enough to make the playoffs if the quarterback play holds up, and if it doesn’t, they’ll be back in the first round of the 2027 NFL Draft looking for another answer.
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