Falcons quarterback Michael Penix isn’t a full participant in the team’s OTA practices this week, but his recovery from a torn ACL has gone well enough for him to take part in 7-on-7 work at this point in the offseason.
Penix said on Tuesday that he “feels like himself” on the field and that his goal has “always been” to be ready for the team’s season opener in September. Once Penix is cleared for full football activities, Penix will have to beat out Tua Tagovailoa to start against the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
That competition has miles to go and Penix said his focus will be on his road rather than on anything Tagovailoa is doing.
“I’m running my own race,” Penix said, via the team’s website. “I can’t look into another lane. But at the same time, we are working together. That’s what its all about. Working together and working with each other to finish the race.”
It will be hard to get a clear read on where things stand in the Falcons’ competition until Penix is back to full speed and the decision will be the first major one that Kevin Stefanski makes as the head coach in Atlanta.
Falcons Clips
The Falcons moved into the OTA phase of their offseason workouts this week and that allows them to start doing 11-on-11 work during practice sessions.
Such work will be a significant part of their quarterback decision heading into the fall, but Michael Penix is not quite ready for that step yet. Head coach Kevin Stefanski said at a Tuesday press conference that Penix remains limited to individual and 7-on-7 work as he continues to recover from a torn ACL.
Stefanski also looked ahead to how the competition with Tua Tagovailoa will unfold once Penix is ready to do everything on the practice field.
“Very intentionally,” Stefanski said. “I think it’s our job — I think [offensive coordinator] Tommy Rees does an outstanding job of making sure that we’re intentional about how we want this to operate. One guy will be up first one period and then switch with the next period and rotate every single day and really almost every drill because the truth is we’re trying to get the best version of all of our players, so we want to mix and match guys in different spots.”
It’s unclear if Penix will move up to full team drills when the Falcons will have their mandatory minicamp next month. If he doesn’t, training camp will be the time when the bulk of the head-to-head competition takes place in Atlanta.
One of the most memorable games in Monday Night Football History took place in Week Three of the 2006 season, when the Saints beat the Falcons in their return to New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. Twenty years later, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wanted a Falcons-Saints Monday night game in New Orleans on the 2026 schedule.
NFL VP of broadcasting planning Mike North says the 2026 schedule has a Week Four Monday night game between the Falcons and Saints at the Superdome because Goodell himself requested that it happen around the time of the 20th anniversary.
“It’s really to the Commissioner’s credit, it was, ‘We’re gonna play Falcons at Saints on Monday night this year, fit it in in that kind of three-week window.’ So, it wasn’t a requirement it had to land in a special week, but it was a requirement, straight from the boss, that it landed on our schedule,” North said.
Some in New Orleans wanted the 2026 game played in Week Three, as the 2006 game was, but North said playing the game in Week Four proved to be a better fit for the NFL’s overall schedule.
“Relative to the exact date of the anniversary, honestly, we figured if we were within a couple of weeks, we were in good shape,” North said. “Fans remember that moment, the electricity, the excitement. If we were a week early, or closer to the day, or a week later, weren’t gonna throw away our best schedule just by being off a couple days. Plus, as you know, there’s a lot of events going on in that region. I don’t have the stadium availability off the top of my head, but relative to the Dome itself, the arena across the street, there’s concerts, there’s basketball games, there’s other things going on at times. It wasn’t a, ‘This game has to be in this week.’”
The 2006 game, remembered most for Steve Gleason’s blocked punt that was recovered by Curtis Deloatch for the Saints’ first touchdown, was a classic. The 2026 game will be an opportunity for New Orleans to celebrate that great moment in Saints history.
NFL Network lost its schedule-release show. It’s nevertheless gaining a late-season Saturday doubleheader.
In Week 16, on the day after Christmas, NFLN will televise a game at 4:30 p.m. ET and 8:00 p.m. ET.
The schedule identifies four potential games for the two slots: Buccaneers-Falcons, Bengals-Colts, Commanders-Vikings, and Panthers Steelers.
The decision as to which games will slide from Sunday to Saturday will be made during the season.
Coupled with a Thursday night game and three Christmas Day games, Week 16 will have 10 total windows — one more than Thanksgiving week. That leaves only eight games to be played on the Saturday afternoon windows.
During 19 years with the Steelers, coach Mike Tomlin worked 114 games against teams from the AFC North. In his fifth game as an analyst on NBC’s Football Night in America, Tomlin will be handling a game involving an AFC North team.
It’ll happen on October 11 in Atlanta, when the Ravens face the Falcons.
As mentioned on Thursday’s PFT Live, Tomlin’s assessment of the Ravens and quarterback Lamar Jackson promises to be must-see TV.
That opinion is based on just a few minutes of hearing Tomlin talk during an FNIA planning meeting on Monday about the challenge of defending Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, along with other things Tomlin believes Jackson needs to do as he gets closer to his 30th birthday.
I’ll defer the details to Tomlin. But his comments riveted the room. In general, you won’t want to miss anything Tomlin says before any Sunday night game. You definitely will not want to miss what he has to say during the pregame show before Jackson and the Ravens face the Falcons in Week 5.
We don’t know if Fernando Mendoza will be starting at quarterback for the Raiders in Week 1 of the regular season, but we do know who the Raiders will be playing in the first overall pick’s potential debut.
The NFL’s schedule reveal on Thursday night shows that the Raiders will host the Dolphins at 4:25 p.m. ET on Sunday, September 13. The game will be on Fox.
Mendoza will have to get the nod over Kirk Cousins in order to start for the Raiders. Offseason addition Malik Willis is expected to make his first appearance for the Dolphins. Both teams will definitely have head coaches making their offseason debut as Las Vegas hired Klint Kubiak in February and Miami hired Jeff Hafley in January.
Sunday will also feature a pair of divisional games in the late afternoon window. The Packers will visit the Vikings while the Commanders will be in Philadelphia to renew their acquaintance with the Eagles. The NFC North matchup will be on CBS while the NFC East clash will be broadcast by Fox.
The other late game on Sunday afternoon will see the Cardinals visiting the Chargers on CBS. Arizona could have Jacoby Brissett, Gardner Minshew or rookie Carson Beck at quarterback for that contest.
The 1 p.m. ET games will send the Bills to Houston for a date with the Texans while the Browns go on the road against the Jaguars. The Colts will host the Ravens, the Saints will visit the Lions, the Buccaneers will travel to Cincinnati for Dexter Lawrence’s first game as a Bengal, and the Steelers will kick off the Mike McCarthy era — with or without Aaron Rodgers — at home against the Falcons.
Previous reports revealed that the Jets will be in Tennessee and that the Bears will head to Charlotte to face the Panthers. The Jets-Titans game will be on CBS along with the Bills-Texans, Ravens-Colts and Browns-Jaguars games. All the other 1 p.m. games will be on Fox.
The entire Week 1 slate will kick off on Wednesday, September 9 with a Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl rematch in Seattle on NBC. Thursday will bring a Netflix game between the 49ers and Rams in the NFL’s first game in Melbourne and Sunday night will find the Cowboys at MetLife Stadium to meet the Giants on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. Those games were all announced ahead of Thursday’s full schedule reveal, which was also the case for the ESPN Monday night game between the Broncos and Chiefs in Kansas City.
The Falcons have agreed to terms with their top draft pick from this year.
Cornerback Avieon Terrell has agreed to a four-year contract with the team. The Falcons had to wait until the second round to select Terrell because they traded their first-rounder to the Rams in order to move up for edge rusher James Pearce in the 2025 first round.
Terrell joins his brother A.J. in the Falcons’ cornerback group after recording 48 tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss, three sacks, five forced fumbles and a fumble recovery in his final season at Clemson.
The Falcons also announced that they have agreed to terms with sixth-round defensive lineman Anterio Thompson. He had 30 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, and 1.5 sacks at Washington last season.
All of the international matchups for the 2026 NFL season were announced on Wednesday morning.
We already knew the first two games on the schedule. The 49ers and Rams will meet in the NFL’s first-ever game in Melbourne, Australia in Week 1 while the Ravens and Cowboys will head to Brazil to play a game in Rio in Week 3.
There will be three straight weeks of games in London kicking off the next week. The Colts will face the Commanders at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in Week 4 and the Eagles and Jaguars will square off in the same place the next week. The Jaguars will stay in London to take on the Texans at Wembley Stadium in Week 6.
From there, it will be on to Paris for the first time in league history. The Steelers will battle the Saints at Stade de France in Week 7.
The Bengals-Falcons matchup in Madrid in Week 9 was announced earlier this week and it will be followed by a Patriots-Lions clash at Allianz Arena in Munich the next weekend. The NFL’s return to Mexico City will come in Week 11 when the Vikings and the 49ers square off on Sunday Night Football.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has talked about his desire to see the league play international games each week and the NFL is moving closer to that goal in 2026.
The uncertainty of Michael Penix’s return from a torn ACL led the Falcons to sign veteran Tua Tagovailoa. Penix’s rehab seems to have ramped up as he seeks to enter the quarterback competition.
Penix is throwing again six months after injuring his left knee in a game against the Panthers.
The Falcons posted video of Penix throwing to wide receiver Drake London at the team’s facility in Flowery Branch, Georgia. A team spokesperson told Marc Raimondi of ESPN that Penix is participating in Phase 2 of the Falcons’ offseason program, which consists of drills and individual work.
Penix, 26, has torn an ACL three times in eight years, twice tearing the ACL in his right knee while in college.
Penix has said he expects to be ready for Week 1, but will that be soon enough to put him in a position to compete with Tagovailoa for the job?
He has started 12 games and thrown for 2,757 yards with 12 touchdowns and six interceptions since the Falcons drafted him eighth overall in 2024.
When Bengals head coach Zac Taylor was asked about the team playing an international game at a Tuesday press conference, he said he was “all for it” and he may have had some advance notice of what was coming a few hours later.
The NFL announced on Tuesday afternoon that the Bengals will be traveling to Madrid to face the Falcons on Sunday, November 8 in Week 9 of the regular season. The game will be played at Real Madrid’s Bernabeu Stadium and it will be telecast on NFL Network.
This will be the third time that the Bengals have played a game outside the United States. They also played games in London in 2016 and 2019.
The full international slate for 2026 is set to be announced on Wednesday morning and the entire scheduled will be revealed on Thursday night.
