The Falcons’ head coaching search will reportedly include a meeting with Antonio Pierce.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that Pierce is slated to interview with the Falcons later this week. He is expected to meet in person with Falcons president of football Matt Ryan and other members of the search team.
Pierce took over as the Raiders’ head coach on an interim basis in 2023 and was hired on a permanent basis after the season. His run with the Raiders ended at the end of the season, however, and he left Vegas with a 9-17 record during his time in the job.
The Giants have also interviewed Pierce this month.
Until the Packers announce that coach Matt LaFleur definitely will be back in 2026, there’s a chance he won’t be.
While most teams have no reason after the end of a given season to state the obvious, there’s currently nothing obvious about LaFleur’s future in Green Bay.
On Wednesday’s PFT Live, we pointed out the possibility that the Packers want to see whether someone will contact them with interest in making a deal for LaFleur. And while LaFleur would have to be willing to participate in the two-step process (new team makes a deal with the Packers, new team makes a deal with LaFleur), it may be his only alternative to accepting an extension he doesn’t like or coaching the final year of his current deal.
Appearing on ESPN Milwaukee earlier today, ESPN’s Adam Schefter characterized LaFleur’s status as “up in the air.” (Aaron Rodgers is gonna be upset.) Schefter explained that, if an extension isn’t finalized, it’s possible that some other team will call the Packers about possibly hiring LaFleur.
Regardless of the procedure that applies in situations like this, the reality is that there will be plenty of back-channel communications regarding, for example, whether LaFleur would be interested in one or more of the various vacancies and what it would take to hire him.
Again, all of this ends the moment the Packers declare LaFleur will be the coach in 2026. Until that occurs, anything can happen.
Former Falcons head coach Raheem Morris has had a few in-person meetings for head coaching vacancies after Atlanta fired him earlier this month.
Via Albert Breer of SI.com, Morris has now interviewed in-person with the Cardinals, Titans, and Giants.
That means each of those teams has conducted at least one in-person interview with a minority candidate. The Giants have had two, satisfying the requirement, as they’ve met with Morris and former Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce.
The Falcons finished 8-9 in 2024 and 2025 under Morris.
Morris was previously Atlanta’s interim head coach in 2020, going 4-7. He also accumulated a 20-25 record in three seasons as Buccaneers head coach from 2009-2011.
As it relates to the Cardinals, Morris is plenty familiar with the NFC West as he served as Rams defensive coordinator from 2021-2023.
John Harbaugh is starting to take in-person interviews.
According to multiple reports, Harbaugh is in New Jersey to meet with the Giants on Wednesday for his first known in-person interview after he was fired by the Ravens last week.
As has been widely noted, Harbaugh is expected to coach in 2026.
The Giants are one of the favorites to land Harbaugh, who reportedly is also set to meet with the Titans and Falcons this week.
While most teams with a head coach vacancy are surely interested in Harbaugh — who recorded a 180-113 regular-season record with a 13-11 postseason record in his 18 seasons with Baltimore — the former Ravens coach is set to be selective about the meetings he takes.
If Harbaugh and the Giants end up being a fit, New York can hire him immediately because the club has satisfied the requirements of the Rooney Rule. But it seems likely that Harbaugh will take more than one in-person meeting before deciding on his next stop.
The Falcons formally introduced Matt Ryan as their president of football on Tuesday, officially welcoming the best quarterback in franchise history back to the organization.
Ryan had been working for CBS first as a game analyst and then a studio analyst since 2023. He told reporters in Tuesday’s press conference that he wasn’t necessarily seeking out a new opportunity. And this job with the Falcons is the only one like it that he would’ve been interested in.
“I think it’s the right opportunity,” Ryan said, via transcript from the team. “No. 1, I think when you look at organizations and you think about places you’d like to be, it comes down to ownership, ownership, ownership, ownership. Bill Cowher, I’ve sat next to him for the last three years, and he would hammer that home all the time. He would joke, the three most important people in the building are the owner, the owner, and the owner. So when you get an opportunity with a previous relationship and knowing what Arthur [Blank] stands for and what his family stands for, and you respect all of those core values, to me, that’s what makes it so exciting in terms of an opportunity.”
Ryan added that he missed getting the sense of wins and losses each week while working on television.
“So, getting back into that gets me excited,” Ryan said. “As you mentioned, not having previous experience in a role like this, nobody does. I’ve been around guys who have been hired as first-time head coaches after being a play caller. I’ve been around coaches who have been position coaches and never play callers and they step into different roles, and they adjust. That’s something that I’ve done my entire life, whether that be in football or whether that be transitioning into TV or doing things. I’ve never been scared of that.”
Plus, his experience as a franchise quarterback put him in conversations that your average player might not have been a part of, patricianly within the Falcons organization.
“When you are quarterback of an organization for a long time, the interactions that you have with the head coach and the meetings that you sit in in their office and talk about all the different things that are going on with the football team and decisions that need to be made or alterations in a plan or in a season of maybe changing directions, it’s different from other players,” Ryan said. “I feel really well versed in those conversations. I feel like I’ve done it with a number of different guys that I have a lot of respect for and seen it from a lot of different angles. I think the same can be true on the front office side of it. The longer I was here, the more discussions that were had. It was never, ‘I was going to be a part of the decision,’ but I was asked for my opinion, and I was asked to interact with them.
“So, I think some of those things will inform what I’m doing now. I’ve got a lot to earn — there’s no doubt about that. But in preparing for this, I talked to a lot of people from around the league, who have moved on as players. And I’m able to multitask. I can listen to noise in the background and not panic and keep going. … I think some of those relationships that I have from around the league, whether it be execs or coaches, owners, GMs, etc., I’m going to lean on those. I feel like I’ve got really strong relationships both inside and outside the building that are going to help me in this role.”
