Jake Matthews keeps finding ways to remind Falcons fans why he belongs in the conversation whenever the team’s most valuable players come up.
A lot of people would point first to Bijan Robinson or Drake London. Some would make the case for Chris Lindstrom.
But Matthews has his own argument, and it got stronger after he revealed during training camp that he played the final 13 games of the 2025 season with a high-ankle sprain. The injury itself wasn’t new - he had suffered the sprain in Week 6 and came back the next week - but learning he pushed through the rest of the year adds a new layer to just how much he was grinding for the Falcons.
That meant he spent those 13 games fighting through the injury for a team that finished 8-9 and moved on from both its head coach and general manager. Even in a season like that, Matthews kept showing up. He’s a five-time captain and has been as steady and as pro-Falcons as anyone in the building, through some of the franchise’s hardest stretches.
The numbers around his availability tell the rest of the story. Matthews has the longest active streak of starts in the NFL at 195, and in Atlanta he is closing in on franchise iron-man status.
His durability has been part of the package from the start, even after a high-ankle sprain in his first NFL game. He still started all but one game as a rookie and never really looked back from there.
His year-by-year run says plenty about that consistency: 15 starts in 2014, then 16 in each season from 2015 through 2020, followed by 17 starts in each year from 2021 through 2025.
“\u201cI got to be out there, man.\u201d”
There’s also the family tree behind the player. Matthews comes from a football line loaded with NFL names: his father Bruce played 19 seasons, he’s the nephew of Clay Jr., the cousin of Clay III, the grandson of Clay Sr., and one of three brothers who all made NFL offensive lines. He was already proven before the pros, too, with 46 consecutive starts in a two-time All-American career at Texas A&M and the Bobby Bowden Award for high performance on the field, in the classroom, and in the community.
And then there’s the money side of being the kind of player a team leans on. Matthews, selected sixth overall in the 2014 NFL Draft, has made nearly $1500 during his 12-year NFL career and has continued restructuring his contract to help the Falcons add talent and manage the cap, including creating $10.5M in cap space as recently as March 2026.
One more story fits the profile perfectly: he once drove from Charlotte to Atlanta on a game weekend to be there for the birth of his first child, then got back on Arthur Blank’s private jet to Charlotte in time to start against the Panthers. That’s the kind of commitment Matthews has built his reputation on, and why Falcons fans have every reason to keep appreciating him while he’s still around.
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Falcons Rookies Are Suddenly Fighting For More Than Preseason Snaps
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For the coaching staff, these exhibitions are about more than just shaking off rust. They are a chance to test rookies against live competition, sort out roster battles and start piecing together who might earn real snaps, or even bigger roles, when the season opens. The Falcons have several young players competing for those opportunities, and the next few weeks should go a long way toward showing which ones are ready to turn a strong summer into something more permanent. [Read more 🡒]
Michael Penix Jr. Gets One Crucial Shot In Falcons QB Battle
The Falcons are giving Michael Penix Jr. a meaningful runway next week when they head into joint practices with the Indianapolis Colts, and head coach Kevin Stefanski said the rookie will be involved in 7-on-7 work. For a quarterback competition that has been watched closely all summer, those reps matter because they offer a cleaner look at Penix in a competitive setting, where timing, decision-making and command can be judged without the full chaos of a preseason game.
Penix has not taken the field in the preseason opener, while the other quarterback drew the start and the early work with the starters. That leaves the joint practices as one of the first real chances for Penix to show how far he has come and make his case in a battle that still feels very much in motion. [Read more 🡒]