2026 Offseason Preview: Atlanta
The Atlanta Falcons replaced their head coach & general manager at the conclusion of the 2025 season in an effort to salvage a young roster
statbutler.com will be releasing offseason previews for all 32 teams in the lead up to free agency. Feel free to share any of the text/visuals below with attribution. All underlying contract data was collected by overthecap.com.
Recent Team History
For the seventh time in eight season, the Falcons won 7 or 8 games. In a division that has been wide open for the last four years or so, it’s a tough place to be. Since the Falcons last NFC South championship in 2016, all three rivals have taken the top spot at least once.
2025 Season
The Falcons closed strong, winning four games in a row to tie the Panthers for the best record in the NFC South despite already being eliminated from playoff contention. Even though the win total was a disappointment, there were some bright moments. Atlanta earned wins over Buffalo and the L.A. Rams. They lost to eventual AFC Champion New England by a point and then lost back-to-back games in overtime.
A New Era
Atlanta began their offseason by firing GM Terry Fontenot after five years and head coach Raheem Morris after two. A week after the close of the 2025 season, former QB Matt Ryan was named President of Football after spending the last two years working at CBS. Ryan began his tenure by hiring Kevin Stefanski as head coach. Stefanski had spent the last six seasons as head coach of the Cleveland Browns, where he twice won AP Coach of the Year. Stefanski will bring Tommy Rees along with him. Rees coached under Stefanski for the last two years and served as his offensive coordinator in 2025. Stefanski has already announced that Rees will call the offensive plays, just as he did to close last season in Cleveland. Jeff Ulbrich will be retained as defensive coordinator. Ian Cunningham was hired as General Manager, but Ryan will serve as the “primary football executive”.
Returning Players
Note that all restructures below are assumed to be max restructures. This means that the team will use void years to prorate cash across up to five seasons, minimizing amount that will hit the current year’s salary cap.
For players who are not vested veterans, I’ve replaced information about the player’s active contract with a description of the team control remaining until the player can become an unrestricted free agent.
The Falcons enter the offseason with one of the strongest offensive lines in football. They’ll be returning four starters and all of their key backups from last season. Atlanta will also expects to get right tackle Kaleb McGary back after missing all of 2025 with a leg injury. Drake London and Bijan Robinson will lead a skill group that is underwhelming in it’s current form.
On defense, the Falcons boast what should be a solid coverage group, though that didn’t really translate last season. The pass rush finally seems to be turning the corner. Atlanta was 11th in QB pressure rate according to NFL Pro, a promising improvement on a rate that was bottom three in the league in 2021, 2022, and 2024. It hasn’t come cheap either. Over the last four drafts the Falcons spent 8 of their 17 picks in the first four rounds on defensive linemen. All of those 8 players remained with the team in 2025.
Just last year, Atlanta got aggressive and drafted a pair of edge rushers in the first round who combined for 16 sacks as rookies. The sack totals likely overstate their impact as James Pearce & Jalon Walker ranked 48th & 52nd respectively among 76 edge rushers with at least 250 pass rushes in the 2025 regular season. Still, it was a reason to feel good about their trade up pick 26 for Pearce which cost them the 13th overall pick in the 2026 draft.
The Pearce trade was expensive at the time and now that he finds himself in legal trouble, it will be an even bigger regret.
Expiring Contracts
There are a couple names here to zero in on, starting with Kyle Pitts. Pitts had a solid 5th year, but on the whole has been a letdown compared to the sky high expectations that led to his being drafted immediately ahead of some of the game’s biggest stars in 2021. I don’t necessarily expect it, but he could receive the franchise (est $16.3m) or transition ($13.9m) tag in advance of free agency. David Onyemata, Kaden Elliss, and Tyler Allgeier all have made cases that they should land solid deals in free agency.
The 2024 Quarterback Gambit
In 2024, the Falcons handed Kirk Cousins $90m guaranteed at signed and then drafted Michael Penix with the 8th overall pick a month later. It was panned by many at the time. My opinion then was that drafting Penix was acceptable, but paying Cousins, who was 36 and coming off a serious injury, was a terrible move if they’d already determined that Penix was worthy of their first round pick. The outcome has been catastrophic. Cousins will ultimately cost the team $100m for a year as a mediocre starter and another as a plus backup. Penix has now torn an ACL for the third time. It remains unclear if he’ll be ready to begin the 2026 regular season.
Cousins altered his contract in the regular season to ensure he’d be released, but I’m a little surprised there hasn’t been much talk about the possibility he’d stick around now that the Falcons have brought in Stefanski, who coached Cousins for a couple years with Minnesota.
Projected Tags & Cuts
I’m not including ERFA eligible players here (expiring contracts with less than 3 accrued seasons), as they can either sign a league minimum contract or the team can allow them to leave.
Below, I’m projecting the Cousins cut and I’m also anticipating Darnell Mooney will be cut after a poor 2025. KhaDarel Hodge, Charlie Woerner, and possibly even Jessie Bates are players to keep an eye on who could be cut or forced into negotiating a pay cut. The Falcons will also pick up Bijan Robinson’s 5th year option for 2027, which should be around $11.7m fully guarnteed.
The Salary Cap
In the image below, each blue bordered rectangle is equivalent to the cap hit of a single player. Within that rectangle, there are more rectangles that break down the player’s cap hit. Areas colored green can be pushed entirely into a future cap years via max restructure. Areas with vertical bars are “locked in” and the team cannot open them up by releasing the player. They represent either fully guaranteed cash that hasn’t been earned yet or remaining proration from cash earned in previous league years.
The Falcons won’t need to do much to achieve cap compliance, but I would anticipate a restructure of one or more of AJ Terrell, Drake London, Kaleb McGary, and Jake Matthews given that all of those players have plenty of fully guaranteed cash that can be pushed.
While $77.7m sounds like a lot of cap space, it’s really not all that great considering my assumption here is that the Falcons will have spent just $189m (30th) to get to that point. This is where you really see the impact of the Cousins contract set in.
Draft Capital
As I mentioned above, Atlanta traded away their first round pick in this draft to select James Pearce in 2025. With just five picks, the earliest of which comes at pick 48, the Falcons have the second least draft capital on my trade based pick value chart, narrowly ahead of Green Bay.