The Steelers do not negotiate contract extensions once the season starts. Thus, time is running out for the team to complete a long-term deal with cornerback Joey Porter.
“It’s a business, and there’s definitely business conversations going on,” head coach McCarthy said Monday, via Jack Markowski of SI.com.
McCarthy insinuated that he expects Porter to play regardless how talks turn out before Sunday’s season opener against the Falcons.
“Yeah, I hope so,” McCarthy said. “You know, just keep working him. He’s still, I’d put him in a ramp-up mode.”
When asked what happens if Porter doesn’t play, McCarthy said, “We’ll see what happens.”
Porter practiced for the first time last Tuesday after spending all of training camp on the active/physically unable to perform list. But last week he was noncommittal about playing Week 1 absent a contract extension.
Porter, a second-round pick in 2023, is entering the final year of his rookie contract scheduled to make $3.924 million this year.
He is coming off a career year, totaling a career-high 14 passes defensed to go along with 52 tackles, one sack and one interception.
Falcons Clips
The last time quarterback Tua Tagovailoa started a game in Pittsburgh, it became his last start with the Miami Dolphins. He was benched after the 28-15 loss on a Monday night in December — and he was cut in March.
Fast forward to September, and Tua will be returning to Pittsburgh as the Week 1 starter for the Falcons.
If it goes poorly, Tua may not be starting for very long. If it goes well, and if the Falcons upset the Steelers (Pittsburgh is currently favored by 3.5 points), there will be a very strong reaction in Western Pennsylvania.
Losing to Tua after drubbing him less than nine months earlier will provide the first clear apples-to-apples comparison between new coach Mike McCarthy and his predecessor, Mike Tomlin. Nuances will easily be lost on Steelers Nation. Yes, the Falcons are an overall better team than the 2025 Dolphins. The common denominator is the quarterback; if he plays dramatically better than he did the last time he played in Pittsburgh, Steelers fans will interpret that as an indication that the new boss won’t have the same kind of success as the old boss.
It would be dubbed an overreaction. But that’s what football fans do. With only seventeen games in a season, they all count. They all spark a reaction. And, at some point, the trend of overreacting shows that, actually, it’s the normal and usual reaction to a team losing a game it should have won.
The Steelers have more than a few winnable games in the eight weeks before the bye, including two against the Browns. Anything less than 5-3 will spark high anxiety on and after Week 10, where the Eagles, Broncos, Texans, Jaguars, a road game at the Bengals, and two games against the Ravens are lurking.
The fans who show up in six days will be expecting a 1-0 start. If the end result is 0-1, sphincters will be tightening quickly in the Steel City.
Falcons head coach Kevin Stefanski named Tua Tagovailoa the team’s starting quarterback for the first game of the season on Monday and that decision was not made over any objection from Michael Penix.
Penix was cleared for 11-on-11 work near the end of August and the quarterback said on Monday that he told Stefanski that he still does not feel like he’s fully recovered from last year’s torn ACL. Penix, who will be inactive in Week 1, said that he wants “to be stronger” and that it isn’t fair to the team to try to go out there until “there’s no doubt in my mind that I trust my knee.”
“I just told him I’m not where I want to be right now,” Penix said, via the team’s website. “And I want to be able to be 100 percent so I can help the team win football games. And I’m really close. Really close.”
Penix has recovered from two other torn ACLs and said that he feels like he tried to come back too soon in the past, so he wants to avoid a similar situation this time. That opens the door for Tagovailoa to seize the job more convincingly than he did this summer, but that’s a risk that Penix appears to be more comfortable with than any having to do with his health.
The Falcons will be starting Tua Tagovailoa in Week 1 against the Steelers and they won’t be turning to Michael Penix if they decide to make a change during the game.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski said at a Monday press conference that Penix will be inactive for the season opener. Cooper Rush will be the backup to Tagovailoa.
Penix was cleared for full football activities in late August and did not play in the preseason, but Stefanski said that he has been pleased with the quarterback’s progress as he returns from a torn ACL.
“We’re all on the same page, and feel good about where he is heading,” Stefanski said, via Tori McElhaney of the team’s website.
Stefanski did not say when he thinks Penix will be ready for game action or what the quarterback depth chart will look like once that’s the case, which should make updates on the plans for the position a regular part of life in Atlanta for the near future.
Training camp opened with four, and potentially five, NFL quarterback competitions.
In the end, all five jobs went to the older of the two primary contenders.
The first decision came in Minnesota, where Kyler Murray prevailed over 2024 top-10 selection J.J. McCarthy in the first competition to be resolved, before the first preseason game. The backup job there also has apparently gone to the older player, with Carson Wentz seemingly leapfrogging McCarthy. (The Vikings have yet to release their Week 1 depth chart.)
Minnesota will enter the season with three former high first-round picks in their quarterback room. Murray was No. 1 overall in 2019, and Wentz was the second overall pick in 2016.
The next decision was made by the Browns, where Deshaun Watson was made the starter (at least for Week 1 and likely Week 2) two weeks ago today, over 2025 fifth-rounder Shedeur Sanders. Watson was the 12th overall pick in 2017.
Last week, the Raiders finally declared that Kirk Cousins, who entered the league as a fourth-round pick in 2012, would start Week 1 over Fernando Mendoza, the No. 1 overall pick in 2026.
And now the Falcons have gone with Tua Tagovailoa, pick No. 5 in 2020, over Michael Penix Jr., the eighth overall selection in 2024. That one feels even more tenuous than Watson in Cleveland; the Falcons were hoping Penix would be ready to go. Ultimately, they decided he wasn’t — and Tua got the nod over Cooper Rush (who’s technically older than Tua).
The fifth competition never became one, because Jacoby Brissett got a new deal done before a hold in gave Gardner Minshew or Carson Beck a chance to learn the new offense and potentially supplant Brissett.
In many situations, winning the starting job to start the season means securing the privilege of eventually being benched. That’s a very real possibility for Watson, Cousins, and Tagovailoa. The safest of them all is Murray, who was likely signed to be the starter — and who is playing for a team that wants to have the same quarterback in place for all 17 regular-season games.
Falcons quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will start on Sunday against the Steelers.
The Falcons finally made the choice today, just six days before the start of the regular season, according to multiple reports.
Tagovailoa was the favorite all along, but Falcons head coach Kevin Stefanski declined to make the choice official. Tagovailoa was seemingly competing with Michael Penix for the job, but Penix is coming off a torn ACL last season and wasn’t healthy enough to make it a real competition.
The Falcons kept four quarterbacks on the 53-player roster, with Cooper Rush and Jack Strand in the quarterback room along with Tagovailoa and Penix. It’s unknown at this point who will be No. 2 on Sunday.
Sunday’s game will mark Tagovailoa’s second straight game in Pittsburgh, as it was also the site of his last game with the Dolphins, a 28-15 loss after which he was benched for the rest of the season.
Tagovailoa will hope he has more job stability as the starting quarterback in Atlanta, but he might not: Given how long it took Stefanski to make Tagovailoa the starter, he might decide quickly to move on if Tagovailoa isn’t working out.
The 49ers are adding some help at defensive end ahead of their season opener in Australia.
Greg Auman of Fox Sports reports that they are signing Khalid Kareem off of the Falcons’ practice squad. Kareem was on the Falcons the last two years and returned to the team after being released by the Giants last weekend.
49ers defensive coordinator Raheem Morris was the head coach in Atlanta during Kareem’s two seasons with the team. He had 11 tackles in six regular season appearances for the Falcons.
Kareem also played in 28 games for the Bears, Colts, and Bengals.
The 49ers announced that Sam Okuayinonu will not play against the Rams on Thursday and they have not yet said if Nick Bosa will play after tearing his ACL last season. Keion White and third-round pick Romello Height are the other defensive ends on their active roster.
The Falcons signed linebacker Bralen Trice to the practice squad, the team announced.
Atlanta drafted Trice in the third round in 2024, but he has not played a game for the Falcons yet. The team waived him on Sunday.
Trice, 25, tore his ACL in his first preseason game and missed his entire rookie year. He then aggravated the same knee in 2025 and didn’t play last season either.
Trice was a two-time first-team All-Pac-12 selection at Washington and a two-time bowl game MVP.
With the first game of the season only nine days away, the Falcons still haven’t named a starting quarterback.
The competition, ostensibly, is between Tua Tagovailoa and Michael Penix Jr. But how, as Simms said on Thursday’s PFT Live, can it be a competition when Penix hasn’t been able to compete?
The Falcons published their weekly media schedule on Friday, and there will be a “starting quarterback press conference” next Wednesday. Obviously, the identity of the starter will be known by then.
Our guess is that it will happen early in the week, probably on Monday, with the announcement coming Tuesday morning at the earliest.
And if Penix still isn’t ready to go as he continues to recover from a torn ACL, the likely options are Tua and Cooper Rush. (I’d roll the dice with undrafted rookie Jack Strand, but that’s possibly one of the many reasons why I don’t run a team.)
Here’s where the situation can get very interesting. If the Falcons decide to go with Rush, who is 9-7 in 16 career starts, why even keep Tua on the team?
His $1.215 million base salary isn’t guaranteed. They could cut him, and he’d still get the full $54 million he’s owed by the Dolphins for 2026.
It made sense to sign Tua. He was cheap. He beat the Falcons in Atlanta last year. When everything is working as planned, he can perform at a high level. When, however, things go sideways (e.g., if the first read isn’t there), Tua tends to get happy feet.
The Falcons gave it a try. Tua gave it a try. If he can’t beat out Rush for the Week 1 start in Pittsburgh (where Tua made his last start for the Dolphins last December), there’s no reason to keep him on the roster. Frankly, if Tua falls behind Rush, Tua shouldn’t want to stay.
The Falcons will add two former players to their Ring of Honor during the 2026 season.
The team announced that they will induct defensive end John Abraham and guard Bill Fralic. The ceremony will be held during the team’s October 11 game against the Ravens on Sunday Night Football.
Abraham was a Jets first-round pick in 2000 and he came to the Falcons in a 2006 trade. He spent seven years with the team and was a first-team All-Pro in 2010. He recorded 68.5 sacks while in Atlanta, which is the most for any Falcons player since sacks became an official stat in 1982.
Fralic was the second overall pick in 1985 and started 115 games over eight seasons with the team. He was a two-time first-team All-Pro and four-time Pro Bowler before finishing his career with one season in Detroit. Fralic died of cancer in 2018.
