Falcons’ new front office did the easy stuff, now, the hard part: Finding a quarterback

On Dec. 29, on the “Monday Night Football” national stage, Bijan Robinson took a simple handoff and ran to the right. Rams defensive back Jaylen McCollough broke through, but Robinson had already made his cut upfield, leaving McCollough desperately grasping at air. Robinson glided to the second level, squeezing past diving defensive lineman Kobie Turner and somehow keeping his balance.

And then he exploded, as if the second and third levels of the defense didn’t exist. Ninety-three yards to the house. One of the highlights of the season, bar none. Robinson finished the game with 229 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns, and the Falcons pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the year, 27-24, over one of the NFL’s best teams.

And yet it all felt so empty — a feeling of “what if?” Atlanta had been eliminated from playoff contention three weeks earlier, the eighth straight season the Dirty Birds failed to qualify for the postseason. All of Robinson’s 2025 brilliance — an NFL-leading 2,298 yards from scrimmage and a first-team All-Pro selection —was for naught. Again.

Atlanta’s search for an answer at quarterback, now a half-decade old, was no closer to an end. It still isn’t.

Robinson signed a record-breaking three-year, $66.75 million deal Tuesday, ending his brief training camp hold-in. He is as deserving as it gets — a true superstar at his position, only 24 years old, and only getting better. His 5,648 career yards from scrimmage are the most ever by a player 23 or younger.

His signing is also the latest in what’s been an expensive offseason in Atlanta. The Falcons also extended wide receiver Drake London, tight end Kyle Pitts and guard Matthew Bergeron, all of whom rank in the top five at their position in terms of average annual value (AAV).

This is all excellent work from the Falcons’ new regime, led by franchise legend Matt Ryan, now the president of football operations, as well as GM Ian Cunningham and coach Kevin Stefanski. There was no reason to wait on these players — all franchise cornerstones — and watch them get more expensive. One can argue a few million dollars here or there, but there should be no major qualms.

It was also easy work.

Now comes the hard part: finding a quarterback to lead this talented offensive nucleus somewhere beyond the final game of the regular season.

The Falcons have been the epitome of mediocrity. They’ve won either seven or eight games five straight years, the longest such streak since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. They had the No. 8 pick three straight years from 2022-24, which landed them London and Robinson — home-run picks — but also Michael Penix, which has been a crucial swing and a miss.

That entire 2024 offseason, in fact, was a swing and a miss —and a devastating one at that. A bases loaded, two outs, down three, bottom-of-the-ninth strikeout. The Falcons drafted Penix a month after signing Kirk Cousins to a four-year, $180 million deal, a move that blindsided Cousins, coming off a torn Achilles.

“If you believe in a quarterback, you have to take him,” then-GM Terry Fontenot said. “And if he sits for four or five years, that’s a great problem to have because we’re doing so well at that position. So, it’s as simple as, if you see a guy you believe in at that position, you have to take him.”

It was one of the strangest reasons ever for a top-10 pick when it happened, and it looks even worse now. It’s the reason Fontenot doesn’t currently have a job in the NFL. Forget four or five years. Two years later, Cousins has never gotten close to his pre-Achilles self (and is now with the Raiders), and Penix has been either injured or underwhelming over the past two years. He now finds himself in a quarterback battle with Tua Tagovailoa, though he’s still reportedly “weeks away” from 11-on-11 work as he rehabs from yet another major knee surgery.

Two more attempts to find a quarterback post-Ryan, two more failures. This one hurts the most, though, because the Falcons had finally assembled a strong supporting cast, led by Robinson, London, Pitts, Bergeron and annual All-Pro Chris Lindstrom.

Now, Atlanta will have to get extremely lucky or be extremely savvy, neither of which describes the previous regime. The first decision by the new regime was the biggest. Stefanski is hoping to stop the revolving door at coach.

Since Dan Quinn’s ouster, Atlanta has gone through Arthur Smith (three seasons) and Raheem Morris (two seasons) and is now turning to the former Browns coach. Stefanski went just 45-56 in Cleveland, but given the Browns’ 21st-century history, he should get a statue. He ended the 17-year playoff drought in 2020 and also made the postseason in 2023, winning AP Coach of the Year both times. He was completely hamstrung by the Deshaun Watson disaster, but otherwise, he has been a competent-at-worst — and, in the right situation, quite good — coach.

It’s no coincidence that Arthur Blank tabbed Ryan, a former quarterback, who then tabbed Stefanski, a quarterback developer. They have to get it right at the game’s most important position.

“We want to be a very intentional group when it comes to developing players,” Stefanski said at his introductory press conference. “Obviously, the quarterback position is at the forefront of that. I’ve been able to be exposed to different quarterbacks, whether it’s rookies or 40-year-old Brett Favre, 40-year-old Joe Flacco. So I’ve seen a bunch of different guys at that position.”

He’s seeing two very different ones right now. Penix has a cannon for an arm, but it’s a loose cannon: one that sprays passes all over. Tagovailoa is far more accurate but has a far weaker arm. Penix wants to hang in the pocket and push the ball downfield. Tagovailoa wants to get it out quickly. Their similarities? Both have struggled with injuries and inconsistency.

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Perhaps the Falcons do get good quarterback play this year, with Stefanski helping accentuate strengths and minimize weaknesses. Tagovailoa — who came cheap because the Dolphins are still paying him so much — was a reasonable bet to make in a short-term pinch. Yes, it’s a long shot, but long shots happen every year in the NFL, even at quarterback. Did many people expect Sam Darnold to succeed in Minnesota or become a Super Bowl champion in Seattle?

What’s next at QB?

In all likelihood, the Falcons will enter next offseason still looking for a quarterback — perhaps even if Atlanta does sneak into the playoffs in the eminently winnable NFC South. And that’s where it gets tricky.

The amount of non-quarterback offensive talent this roster has compiled is impressive. Atlanta ranked 12th in Jared Dubin’s offensive infrastructure rankings. The offensive line ranked 16th in pass blocking and 10th in run blocking in PFF’s grades. Even the defense ranked 12th last year in DVOA, an opponent-adjusted metric from FTN. It all supports the idea that the Falcons are a quarterback away.

It also means it’s hard to get a really good draft pick in spite of poor quarterback play. There’s too much talent for the Falcons to truly bottom out. They picked “only” 15th last year and would have picked 13th this year if they had their first-round pick. 

The ballyhooed 2027 draft class could feature many highly drafted quarterbacks, but the Falcons likely won’t have the pick of the litter. Can they find the right guy, even if he is the fourth, fifth or sixth quarterback off the board? In 2024, Bo Nix was the sixth quarterback taken, at 12th overall. But that draft also had Penix, taken eighth, and J.J. McCarthy, taken 10th after a trade up. Both selections were major setbacks for the respective franchises.

Finding a rookie quarterback is essentially like trying to avoid countless pitfalls — many difficult to identify — en route to a billion-dollar prize. The Ryan-Cunningham-Stefanski trio will have to do so, should they choose to go their route.

They could also dip their toe in the recent “bridge quarterback/reclamation project/veteran prove-it” trend, which has succeeded in Minnesota (Darnold), Seattle (Darnold again) and Tampa Bay (Baker Mayfield). Perhaps that means Kyler Murray, though if he plays well in Minnesota, it’s hard to see the Vikings making the same mistake they made with Darnold. Perhaps that’s Mayfield, who is in a contract year. But that is a narrow needle to thread, and one that the Falcons may be hesitant to try if Tagovailoa doesn’t work out.

So herein lies the issue: Can Atlanta — still seemingly stuck in the middle of the league, even after all these extensions — find a way out by finding a quarterback? The easy calls are done. Good work. Now comes the toughest challenge in sports, exactly why Ryan, Stefanski and Cunningham were hired in the first place.