Falcons Clips
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.
The Falcons have announced several roster moves on Monday, including two previously reported signings.
Atlanta announced the club has signed defensive tackle Ross Blacklock and linebacker Daveren Rayner in addition to offensive linemen Brandon Walton and Layden Robinson.
All four players participated in Falcons rookie minicamp on a tryout basis.
Blacklock last appeared in a regular season game in 2023, playing three games for the Titans and one for the Jaguars.
Rayner is an undrafted rookie out of Kentucky.
As corresponding moves, the Falcons announced they’ve released defensive tackle Ben Stille, running back Carlos Washington, receiver Devin Thompkins, and tight end Brandon Frazier.
The Falcons are signing veteran offensive lineman Brandon Walton, Greg Auman of Fox Sports reports.
Walton, 28, participated in the Falcons’ rookie minicamp on a tryout basis.
He went undrafted out of Florida Atlantic in 2020 and signed as a college free agent with the Bills. Buffalo waived Walton out of training camp, and he signed with the Steelers’ practice squad.
He joined the Bucs in 2021.
Walton played 15 games with two starts for the Bucs in 2022-23 before joining the Panthers, where he appeared in four games over the past two seasons.
Offensive lineman Layden Robinson took part in the Falcons’ rookie minicamp on a tryout basis and he is set to stick around Atlanta for a little while longer.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that the Falcons will be signing Robinson to their 90-man roster. There’s no word of any other roster moves at the moment.
Robinson was a 2024 fourth-round pick by the Patriots and he started 11 games at guard during his rookie season in New England. Robinson landed on injured reserve last summer, however, and he was waived during the season. The Raiders added him to their practice squad and signed him to a future contract before waiving him earlier this month.
The Falcons have Chris Lindstrom and Matthew Bergeron back as their starting guards, so Robinson will likely be competing for a reserve role over the rest of the offseason.
As the World Cup creeps closer, the prices keep shooting higher. In Atlanta, at the stadium that has shed its name temporarily at the behest of fútbol behemoth FIFA, Falcons owner Arthur Blank is committed to keeping low-cost concessions in place at the venue where eight matches will be played.
In an interview with WSB-TV, Blank made it clear that “fan-friendly” pricing for food and drink won’t change at the once and future Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
“Fans give us their energy, their time, their passion, their resources, their families, whatever it may be, and we need to honor that in the truest sense of the word, whatever we can,” Blank said.
Look at the menu. Hot dogs are only $2. Popcorn is $2.
FIFA doesn’t share that same view. Earlier this week, FIFA tripled the price of the remaining tickets to the July 19 World Cup final, offering seats for as much as $32,970 each. And that’s before the tickets land on resale platforms, where the prices will go even higher.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino recently defended the pricing, attributing it to the market. Where FIFA will be raking in plenty of money via the 30-percent cut (15 percent from the buyer, and 15 percent from the seller) that FIFA gets for tickets resold on its exclusive ticketing platform.
The issue landed on the radar screen of the U.S. president, with Donald Trump being informed that tickets to the U.S. opening match against Paraguay start at $1,000.
“I did not know that number,” President Trump told James Franey of the New York Post. “I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest with you.”
That $1,000 is nothing. On the FIFA resale platform, tickets to the World Cup final were priced as high as $11,499,998.85. If a ticket sells for that amount, FIFA will walk away with nearly $3.5 million on that transaction alone.
Yes, the market is the market. Everything is worth whatever someone will pay for it. There’s a point at which the number becomes obscene — and at which it locks out the vast majority of day-to-day fans who support the sport zealously during the four years between World Cup tournaments.
Don’t expect FIFA to undergo an epiphany, not after Infantino gets the final report of the total profit generated by the 2026 World Cup. The point, for now, is that Blank deserves credit for not putting a thumb (and both hands and elbows) on the scale at a time when everyone else connected to the event seems to be doing so.
