Atlanta Falcons take Big Step Backwards in SI's Game-By-Game NFL Predictions

FLOWERY BRANCH, GA - The Atlanta Falcons are in their second week of training camp, and they still have big questions to answer before they take on the Pittsburgh Steelers on Week 1 in five weeks.

The most pressing of them still remains: Who is going to be the quarterback?

Michael Penix Jr. still hasn't been cleared for 11v11s, with the fear that a pass rusher could fall into his healing knee. However, he's moved without discomfort since the Falcons hit the field in June at OTAs, and he's looked sharp at training camp.

Tua Tagovailoa has done even less in practice than Penix after suffering back tightness the week before camp opened.

With big doubts at the game's most important position, it's natural that national prognosticators have doubts about new head coach Kevin Stefanski's first season with the Falcons.

Sports Illustrated's Connor Orr annually takes on the Herculean task of predicting every game for every team. Not just the win-loss record, but every game. He came close on the Atlanta Falcons last year with a 9-8 record, even if he missed nearly every specific game prediction as the schizophrenic Falcons win in Minnesota, defeat 2024 darlings Washington and Buffalo, but get blown out by Carolina in a four-game span.

This year, he's taking a more cautious approach with the Falcons going 6-11 with a more difficult schedule. The big reason is no surprise. It's the quarterback. It's always the quarterback. A slow start dooms the Falcons with a 1-4 start and a 3-7 record at the bye. It's another 3-3 split with the NFC South.

In typical Falcons fashion, they go 3-2 down the stretch after falling as low as 3-9 to sabotage their draft position for a quarterback-heavy 2027 draft class.

"As we get closer to game time without Michael Penix Jr. participating in team drills, and Tua Tagovailoa inching toward a Week 1 start carrying his own troubling injury history, one has to wonder what happened to the rest of the plan," Orr wrote on Sports Illustrated.

"Penix has not yet played a full season’s worth of NFL games (this is not all due to injury) and he is entering Year 3. Tagovailoa is migrating from one of the most quarterback-friendly offenses in recent NFL history to a system that struggled to open its arms for Baker Mayfield or Deshaun Watson in Cleveland. Outside of Mayfield’s 11–5 campaign in 2020, the highest quarterback rating by a QB with multiple starts during Stefanski’s run with the Browns was held by Joe Flacco and Case Keenum."

The Falcons have a long history of not having much of a pass rush. They had a franchise-record 57 sacks last season, but it's being looked at as a blip on the radar rather than the new normal in Atlanta.

"Atlanta comes into this season without a world-beating defensive front and an entire unit that, while extremely well-coached and having skyrocketed as a pass-rushing unit last year, does not give me enough confidence to lean Atlanta in coin-flip games. I do have Stefanski winning the return to Cleveland, though," Orr concluded.

The young Falcons' defensive front needs to prove that last season wasn't a fluke. Defensive tackle Brandon Dorlus is being wildly overlooked around the NFL after he led all NFC interior linemen with 8.5 sacks last year. James Pearce Jr. is being written off for the season, and Jalon Walker is being largely ignored.

Dorlus is the oldest of the three at 25. Their 24.5 sacks between them were more than the entire team had in 2021 and 2022.

Nothing Orr wrote comes as a surprise. The Falcons might have the highest variance between the floor and their ceiling of any team in the NFL. If they get good quarterback play, they have enough talent to win 12 games in a still-wide-open NFC South.

If they don't, they'll be scouting the top of next year's draft early for their next potential franchise quarterback.

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