The Falcons placed the franchise tag on tight end Kyle Pitts. However, they have not ruled out trading Pitts if the right offer comes along.
“It’s my job as the General Manager to do what’s best for the organization,” Ian Cunningham said, via Josh Kendall of TheAthletic.com. “Kyle is a great player. We’ve seen his skill set. Also, it’s my job to listen. We’re excited to have Kyle. We’re excited for his future.”
Pitts will make $15 million under the tag in 2026 if he isn’t signed to a long-term deal.
He finished second among tight ends in receptions (88) and receiving yards (928) last season, trailing only Arizona’s Trey McBride. Pitts added a career-high five touchdown catches, while earning second-team All-Pro honors.
Pitts, 25, has 284 receptions for 3,579 yards and 15 touchdowns in five seasons after the Falcons made him the fourth overall pick.
If Pitts remains with the team, head coach Kevin Stefanski could use multiple tight end sets with Pitts, Austin Hooper and Charlie Woerner.
“We certainly want to be a team that goes in and out of different personnel groupings,” Stefanski said. “The spring and summer will allow us to see what our best group is and what we want to lean into.”
Falcons Clips
The NFL approved a plan on Tuesday to expand replay assistance, allowing the league at the command center in New York to drop a flag when considering a disqualification for a flagrant football act and a non-football act that was not called on the field.
Having New York put a flag on the field is a line the league previously had not crossed. While it was not originally in the proposal, it was amended to include both a flag and disqualification. But according to Rich McKay, co-chair of the Competition Committee, it’s likely not going to be the last we hear of this kind of assistance — in part because there were two instances last year where New York was ready to do something but could not.
“I think there was a good, healthy discussion on the whole idea of replay assist and the idea that over time we will probably expand replay assist even more and allow New York to do more,” McKay said on Tuesday. “But this was the first time that we ventured into the world of putting a flag down and having New York step in and disqualify a player.”
McKay added that there was not much resistance to having New York put down a flag, even in this narrow set of circumstances.
“I would say the room and the discussion in the room was more along the lines of, ‘Can we do more, not less?’” McKay said. “And I think we as a committee … we stand true to the idea that we want replay assist and we want New York to be able to help. We just don’t want to move too fast. We don’t want to add too much to it.”
McKay noted that Broncos head coach Sean Payton and Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell noted that New York dropping a flag in this particular instance made sense if there were an ejection. McKay cited the example of an offense still needing to punt on fourth-and-2 despite a defensive player getting ejected via the league office for throwing a punch.
Further on the subject, McKay noted that the league wants there to be more transparency in the process of replay assist, but not at the expense of slowing the game down.
“I think we’ve seen in college where all of a sudden, there’s been this discussion of when they … watch replay or a challenge, they have that discussion [on the broadcast] and people like that,” McKay said. “In our case, we have somebody in the stadium that’s a replay assistant, we have New York that’s watching the games, we have a referee on the field, and we are really trying to hurry the process along. We’re not interested in three-hour, 20-minute games as college has three-hour, 30-minute games. So for us, that plays a big part in it.
“This year, we did put in the book that we want to make sure the referee, every single time replay assist is used, they announce replay assist. So people hear it, it’s heard by everyone, the referee says, ‘With replay assist, we did’ this — because we do want that … so people know that people looked at it, blessed it, and this is the outcome.”
Separately, the NFL passed the plan for even more expanded replay assistance if the league uses replacement officials for this season. But McKay noted that is more about how replacement officials will have to make calls for fouls in the NFL game that may not exist at other levels, like illegal contact.
Still, more and more replay assistance sounds like it’s on the way.
“I do believe … there’s a little better appetite for this than I might’ve thought going into that room,” McKay said. “I still also know that 24 votes are real and that hurdle is not small. And I don’t think we’re in a hurry to do it if we can’t do it really well.”
Jaxon Smith-Njigba signed a contract extension with the Seahawks this month that set a new high for average annual salary at wide receiver and the ripple effects of that deal were felt in Atlanta.
Falcons General Manager Ian Cunningham said on Monday that you “have to kind of have your eyes set on the league” when it comes to planning for extensions for your own players and wide receiver Drake London is at the front of that line. London is set to play the 2026 season on his fifth-year option, which makes him a prime candidate for a new deal and Cunningham said it is something the team is thinking about as the offseason plays out.
“I think it’s top of mind,” Cunningham said, via the team’s website. “I think all of these type of decisions are top of mind just in terms of you know its coming, but right now we are really focused on this wave of free agency, we have the draft coming — but don’t think for one second that that hasn’t been thought of. Don’t think for one second that we aren’t already thinking about all of these different things moving forward.”
London’s contract situation isn’t the only one that Cunningham is keeping tabs on right now. Tight end Kyle Pitts got the franchise tag this month and running back Bijan Robinson is now eligible for an extension, although the Falcons could also exercise his fifth-year option in order to create more time for such a deal to come together.
The NFL is struggling to balance the P.R. and legal realities of diversity in key positions with a potential political assault from those who regard the three-letter “DEI’ acronym as a four-letter word. Through it all, the results speak for themselves.
Exhibit A? The 2026 photo of the NFL’s head coaches. Exhibit B? The 2026 photo of the NFL’s General Managers.
Falcons G.M. Ian Cunningham, whose promotion from assistant G.M. in Chicago somehow didn’t result in the Bears receiving a pair of third-round compensatory picks, addressed the situation on Monday, in comments to David Brandt of the Associated Press.
“Just from my position, especially being a Black man, there’s still work to be done,” Cunningham told Brandt. “Now that I’m in this position and have this platform, I’m going to be intentional about what we do from a grassroots effort to a director level. . . . I do think it’s important to give people of all races and sexes a chance to be in a position to further their career.”
Cunningham’s comments come only days after Florida took aim at the Rooney Rule as discriminatory against white men, and in the aftermath of Steelers owner Art Rooney II acknowledging that “the environment has changed.”
The environment has changed, at the national level and in plenty of states. The law has not. And the NFL’s historical performance as it relates to the hiring of coaches and General Managers — coupled with the league’s decision more than 20 years ago to make interviews of minority candidates for the most coveted positions mandatory — shows that the longstanding legal standard has not been met.
The problem is that there has been no real accountability. And the irony is that the first governmental effort to enforce the law comes from the perspective of the demographic that has benefited from the league’s traditional hiring practices.
The league undoubtedly hopes the Florida problem will go away. That the demand made by Florida attorney general James Uthmeier to abandon the Rooney Rule as to the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers is more performative than substantive.
Whatever Uthmeier’s motivations and intentions, the NFL should do the right thing. Don’t run. Don’t hide. Stand up and say, in a clear, loud voice, “Bring it on.”
Would that be good for business? Probably not. But doing the right thing isn’t always good for business. The truest test of an organization’s true character is whether it will do the right thing when it could be bad for business.
The Rams aren’t the only team interested in Kirk Cousins as a backup quarterback. The Packers also have interest.
Packers General Manager Brian Gutekunst confirmed Monday that Cousins is one of the options the team has discussed after losing Malik Willis in free agency. Desmond Ridder and Kyle McCord are the two quarterbacks currently behind Jordan Love.
“Yeah, we’ve discussed a lot of those options,” Gutekunst said when asked about Cousins, via Matt Schneidman of TheAthletic.com. “Obviously that’s a guy who’s got a lot of pelts on the wall in this league, so we’ve certainly discussed all those kind of things.”
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur was the quarterbacks coach in Washington during Cousins’ first two seasons in the league (2012-13).
Cousins started eight games last season as the backup to Michael Penix, who tore his ACL in Week 11 against Carolina.
Cousins has thrown for 44,700 yards with 298 touchdowns and 131 interceptions in his 14-year career.
While the question of whether the Bears will or won’t (they won’t) get a pair of third-round compensatory picks as a result of the hiring of former assistant General Manager Ian Cunningham by the Falcons as General Manager has been resolved, many still wonder why the provision rewarding teams for developing minority candidates for high-level promotions didn’t apply to Chicago.
On Monday, we asked Falcons president of football Matt Ryan if he understands why the Bears didn’t get the picks, given the clear impression that Ian Cunningham is the Atlanta G.M.
“He is the G.M.,” Ryan said. “He is the G.M. I’m learning — I mean you talk about things that are coming on your desk every day, management council things, different things like that, why they rule certain ways, why they don’t rule certain ways. I’m not experienced enough to give you a really credible answer on that at this point. I would say this, I think in every facet of the word, Ian’s a General Manager in this league.”
Obviously, it’s not Ryan’s call. It’s the league’s call. And it’s still not clear why the league called it the way they did.
Maybe, frankly, it was part of the apparent “no sudden moves” strategy aimed at avoiding the kind of assault on the Rooney Rule that Florida attorney general James Uthmeier started last week.
“The environment has changed,” as Steelers owner Art Rooney II said last week. Perhaps that changed environment has prompted the NFL to change its approach to granting the picks where a new General Manager has someone else between him and the owner in the football operation.
Kevin Stefanski went through a kind of offseason quarterback competition last year with the Browns.
Now head coach of the Falcons, Stefanski is preparing to have another one in 2026 — although this one will take a different shape.
With Michael Penix Jr. still recovering from a torn ACL, Tua Tagovailoa will take the bulk of the offseason reps at quarterback. But once Penix is healthy, the Falcons are expecting QB1 to be up for grabs.
“It will be a competition but I can’t tell you exactly what it will look like until Michael gets healthy,” Stefanski said at the annual league meeting on Monday, via Tori McElhaney of the team’s website. “But the quarterback position — like all of our other positions — will be a competition, yes.”
Stefanski also noted that Penix’s top goal for now is to focus on his rehab and get healthy.
“He’s in the building all the time and I’m excited for what that looks like when he’s healthy,” Stefanski said. “But we’re not going to rush him, and he’s not going to rush himself.
“There are obviously timelines when it comes to injuries, but we are all different. So, we want to see how he looks in a week, how he looks in a month,” Stefanski added, saying it wouldn’t be fair to say if he thinks Penix will be ready for the start of the season.
But either way, there will be competition.
“I think our plan was to always bring in competition across our roster,” Stefanski said. “It’s something Ian believes in, I believe in, Matt believes in. That only makes all of us better at every position.”
Kevin Stefanski hasn’t coached Tua Tagovailoa yet, but the Falcons head coach thinks he already has some common ground with the quarterback.
Stefanski was hired by the Falcons after being dismissed by the Browns at the end of the 2025 season and Tagovailoa signed a one-year deal with the team after being released by the Dolphins. Stefanski told Mike Garafolo of NFL Media that he feels a desire to show that the Browns made a mistake and that he believes Tagovailoa has the same motivation as he prepares for his first season in Atlanta.
“There’s something to be said when you’re fired,” Stefanski said. “I can attest to that. You want to prove people wrong. You have a chip on your shoulder. I think where I’m coming into this, where Tua’s coming into this is, listen, this is not exactly how you thought it would go, but guess what, that’s the reality, and how are we gonna respond? I think that’s what he’s made of. You look back his career, you look back at his college career, he’s responded.”
Michael Penix will have a say in whether Tagovailoa is on the field for the Falcons this fall, but he still needs to recover from last season’s torn ACL and that process should offer Tagovailoa space to show that he’s capable of running the offense at a higher level than he reached in Miami.
The Buccaneers hosted free agent linebacker DeAngelo Malone on a free agent visit on Thursday.
Malone, 26, spent his first four seasons with the Falcons after they made him a third-round pick in 2022.
He landed on injured reserve last season after injuring an ankle in Week 10 against the Colts. Malone ended up playing nine games, and he totaled eight tackles, an interception and a pass defensed.
Malone played all but two games in his first three seasons.
In his career, Malone has recorded 59 tackles, three sacks, an interception and a pass defensed.
The Falcons have signed free agent running back Tyler Goodson, the team announced Thursday.
Goodson is a native of Suwanee, Georgia, who attended North Gwinnett High School, so he is returning to his home state to continue his professional career. He will join a backfield that features Bijan Robinson.
The Packers signed Goodson as an undrafted free agent in 2022 after he gained more than 3,000 scrimmage yards during his three-year career at the University of Iowa. He spent his rookie season on the Packers’ practice squad before joining the Colts in 2023.
Goodson has appeared in 33 games for the Colts the past three seasons with one start. He has gained 376 yards from scrimmage, including 264 on the ground, and has scored two touchdowns.
In 2025, Goodson played 35 offensive snaps and 130 on special teams in 11 games. He had 11 touches for 32 yards.
