Falcons Clips
The Falcons officially re-signed defensive lineman Elijah Garcia on Tuesday.
Garcia was tendered as an exclusive rights free agent, so he wasn’t able to talk to other teams over the last few weeks and he formally returned to the roster with the team’s offseason program getting underway this week.
The Falcons signed Garcia off of the Giants’ practice squad last November. He played in three games for Atlanta after appearing in four contests for the Giants.
Garcia also played five games for the Giants in 2024 and made five appearances for the Broncos over his first two NFL seasons. He has 28 tackles, two sacks, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery over the course of his career.
The Falcons’ offseason program is getting going this week and one of their key offensive players will be in the building.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, tight end Kyle Pitts is signing his franchise tender, putting him under contract with Atlanta for 2026 under a one-year deal worth $15.045 million.
As a franchise-tagged player, Pitts can still negotiate and potentially sign a multi-year deal with the Falcons through July 15.
The No. 8 overall pick of the 2021 draft, Pitts officially completed his rookie contract in 2025. He had his best season since his rookie year, catching 88 passes for 928 yards with five touchdowns. He was a second-team AP All-Pro selection.
In 78 career games with 72 starts, Pitts has caught 284 passes for 3,579 yards with 15 TDs.
Ian Cunningham is closing in on his first draft since becoming the Falcons’ General Manager and he wouldn’t mind having a little more ammunition in his arsenal once things get underway later this month.
The Falcons currently have five picks at their disposal and they do not have a first-round selection as a result of a trade with the Rams last year to move back into the first round in order to select edge rusher James Pearce. That’s part of the reason why the Falcons were so active in free agency, although Cunningham said the team is still looking for ways to add “more swings at the plate.”
“For us, it’s one of those things where we have to go into this thinking we only have five picks. That’s worst case,” Cunningham said, via the team’s website. “If we come out of it with just five picks, we come out of it with just five picks. We are already looking at different ways to potentially manufacture some more. But if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.”
Unless Cunningham is willing to sacrifice more future capital to add selections now, the Falcons will either be looking at trading down or trading current members of the roster in order to add selections.
The NFL will release its schedule next month, and among the games to watch are the Buccaneers’ NFC South matchups against the Falcons.
Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield added some spice to an already spicy rivalry after the Falcons named Kevin Stefanski their new head coach. The two men spent two seasons together in Cleveland. It apparently was one season too long.
In a social media post, Mayfield accused Stefanski of not contacting him after a 2022 trade to the Panthers, accusing the coach of treating him “like a piece of garbage.” Mayfield also pointedly said, “Can’t wait to see you twice a year, coach.”
Last week, Bucs coach Todd Bowles told Josina Anderson of the Exhibit News Network that Mayfield and Stefanski would have to decide it on the field.
“I think that’s something that they have to figure out from that standpoint since we can’t have a boxing match where they get in the ring with each other and knock each other out,” Bowles told Anderson. “You know we’re going to back our guy Baker, and I’m sure they’re going to back their coach as well. It’s a division game, so it’s already going to be a tough-fought, hard-fought game, so it just adds to it.”
Stefanski took the high road in his response to Mayfield, who has since downplayed his initial remarks.
The Falcons will report for the first day of their offseason program on Tuesday, but edge rusher James Pearce is not expected to be there.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Pearce will not be in attendance. Pearce faces several criminal charges after being arrested in Florida in February.
Pearce allegedly drove his vehicle into a car being driven by his ex-girlfriend and then tried to flee from police. He faces felony charges of charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, fleeing and eluding police, and resisting an officer with violence for that incident and the woman, WNBA player Rickea Jackson, has accused Pearce of abuse on other occasions as well.
The NFL has said it will review Pearce’s case, but he has not been put on paid leave at this time. A trial date is set for May and it is unclear if Pearce will be back with the Falcons before the matter is resolved.
Two NFC South teams are getting a closer look at an incoming quarterback over the coming days.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Haynes King is slated to visit with the Panthers and Falcons this week.
King, 25, began his collegiate career at Texas A&M in 2020 and transferred to Georgia Tech in 2023. He started 36 games for the Yellow Jackets over the last three seasons. In 2025, King completed 69.8 percent of his passes for 2,951 yards with 14 touchdowns and six interceptions. He also rushed for 953 yards with 15 TDs.
In his 46 career collegiate games, he completed 65.6 percent of his throws for 9,486 yards with 65 touchdowns and 34 interceptions. He also rushed 471 times for 2,427 yards with 37 TDs.
The Raiders found a way to funnel $20 million to quarterback Kirk Cousins for 2026 while also sticking the Falcons with $8.7 million of the bill. The Falcons, as we understand it, don’t intend to make a stink about it.
The issue comes from a fully-guaranteed $10 million obligation for 2026, which vested when Cousins remained on the Atlanta roster in March 2025. (The “widespread expectation” that he’d be cut before it vested should have been much more narrow.) With Cousins having a 2026 market value in excess of $10 million, the Falcons may have thought they’d avoid paying any of the final $10 million.
The Raiders had another plan. By giving Cousins a $1.3 million salary in 2026 and a fully-guaranteed $10 million roster bonus due in March 2027, the Raiders found a way to give Cousins $20 million while only paying $11.3 million of it. The Falcons remain on the hook for the remaining $8.7 million.
While the precise language of the Cousins deal has yet to surface, it’s believed that the contract will result in Cousins being released after one season. That would, in theory, allow him to do the same thing next year — getting the minimum from a new team, forcing the Raiders to pay the balance, and adding a fully-guaranteed roster bonus for 2028.
Regardless, the Raiders found a loophole and used it. And the Falcons plan to let it go.
Making it easier for the Falcons to move on is the fact that they got quarterback Tua Tagovailoa for $1.3 million in 2026, with the Dolphins owing him $52.7 million.
As to the possibility that the loophole will be closed, one source predicts it will remain. For one thing, any offset (even if it’s only the minimum salary) helps defray the sunken cost of a failed contract. Also, the loophole the Raiders utilized can now be used by any other team that hopes to sign a player whose market value exceeds his guaranteed pay.
Besides, it will rarely be used. Younger players (like Tagovailoa and Kyler Murray) will strongly prefer a one-year deal and a shot at the open market. (Murray wisely added a no-tag clause to his contract with the Vikings.) A guarantee in the second year only becomes useful to a player who may be inching toward the end of his career. Rarely will a team be willing to make a major commitment beyond the first year to a player who was just released by a team that owed him a significant commitment.
Kirk Cousins has spent 14 years in the NFL. He’s been to the playoffs three times. He has one postseason win.
And he nevertheless sits near the top of the list of all-time NFL earners.
Depending on the source, Cousins is either second behind Matthew Stafford or third behind Stafford and Tom Brady. Once the latest $20 million is added to the total Cousins pile, he’ll likely become the undisputed No. 2.
And $20 million is a key number. It’s the bookend to the figure that sparked Cousins’s climb.
In 2016, Washington applied the franchise tag to Cousins, at $20 million, after his four-year, fourth-round contract expired. But they offered him a long-term deal with an average annual value of $16 million.
It made the decision a no-brainer for Cousins. Take the $20 million, show up for everything, and focus on having the kind of season that would lay the foundation for a long-term deal.
In 2017, Washington tagged him again, at $24 million. (Some in the organization at the time lobbied for Colt McCoy at $3 million, arguing that Cousins wasn’t eight times better than McCoy.)
As of 2018, Washington wasn’t inclined to give Cousins a 44-percent increase (by rule) for a third tag. He became a free agent and the highest-paid player in NFL history after the Vikings boxed out the Jets.
His initial three-year deal in Minnesota became a six-year stay. When the Vikings insisted on a year-to-year arrangement as of 2024, Cousins opted for the multi-year financial security in Atlanta, which (as he quickly learned) didn’t mean multi-year job security.
Through it all, Cousins kept adding cash to the pile. He got $98.7 million for two years with the Falcons. His new deal with the Raiders puts him north of $330 million.
It’s obviously a temporary title. As the NFL’s money increases, the salary cap will rise and the market at the various positions will, too. Inevitably, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes will be No. 1 and No. 2.
For now, though, the biggest claim to fame for Kirk Cousins comes not from his exploits in the postseason, but from trips to the bank made in January and other months of the year.
The NFL’s intransigence regarding the Bears’ plea for compensatory draft picks following the hiring of Ian Cunningham as the Falcons’ General Manager raises an interesting question.
Could another team hire Cunningham away from the Falcons as its primary football executive?
It’s a fair question. If Cunningham didn’t get a job with the Falcons that triggers the provision in the Rooney Rule that rewards a team for developing a minority candidate who becomes a General Manager with another team, he’s not really a General Manager. Another team could, in theory, hire him as a General Manager — if that G.M. job makes him the primary football executive.
That’s how the league distinguished the Saints getting a pair of third-round picks when assistant G.M. Terry Fontenot became the Falcons’ G.M. in 2021. Although Rich McKay was the Falcons’ president and CEO at the time, Fontenot became the primary football executive. This time around, Matt Ryan (the president of football) is viewed as the primary football executive.
For now, it’s a hypothetical. As soon as next month, it could become something tangible.
The Vikings will be looking for a new General Manager. If the job, as defined by the Vikings, makes the new G.M. the primary football executive, they could hire Cunningham.
It doesn’t even have to go that far to become a potential mess for the league. The Vikings could, in theory, put in a request to interview Cunningham. And the Falcons, under the league’s Rooney Rule reasoning, wouldn’t be able to say no.
We’ve asked the league for clarification of this point. But it’s hard to imagine that Cunningham wouldn’t be eligible to be interviewed or hired by the Vikings or any other team that would make him the primary football executive.
If Cunningham can’t be hired by another team as its primary football executive, the league would have created a bizarre dead zone for NFL front-office positions. It would make the job Cunningham has big enough to prevent upward mobility elsewhere, but not big enough to trigger the compensatory draft-pick provision.
Eventually, it could become an issue for the league to confront. If the Vikings don’t try to interview him next month, the question will become ripe for consideration the moment a team that is looking for a primary football executive submits a slip to the league office seeking permission from the Falcons to interview their G.M. who, per the league, isn’t really the G.M.
Offseason programs will start getting underway around the NFL next week.
The ten teams that hired new coaches this offseason will be eligible to start working with their players on Monday, April 6. The Ravens are the only team that has set that as their first day of work while the Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Browns, Raiders, Dolphins, Giants, Steelers and Titans have set Tuesday as their opening day.
All of those teams will also be able to hold a voluntary minicamp later in the spring. Every team is also scheduled to hold a rookie minicamp and a mandatory minicamp over the course of the next few months.
The first two weeks of work for all teams is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only. The three-week second phase allows for on-field work, but no full-speed team drills while the third OTA phase allows for team drills, but there is no live contact allowed at any point in the offseason.
Most of the 22 teams with returning coaches will be opening their offseason programs on April 20 or 21. The Broncos have set May 4 as their first day.
