Atlanta Falcons

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.

The NFL has spoken. And there’s nothing the Bears can do about it.

They tried. Chicago appealed the decision to not award the team a pair of third-round compensatory draft picks following the hiring of former Bears assistant General Manager Ian Cunningham as the new General Manager of the Falcons. On Friday, the league issued its final ruling.

“The matter is now closed following the club’s appeal,” the league said, via Ian Rapoport of NFL Network. “The NFL informed the Bears today they will not receive compensatory picks. The policy is designed to provide picks for the Primary Football Executive position. The League determined Mr. Cunningham did not fill that role with the Falcons as it is defined in League rules.”

That was the explanation the NFL provided when the issue first emerged. During Super Bowl week, new Falcons president of football Matt Ryan made it clear that Cunningham runs free agency and the draft. The league said Ryan, not Cunningham, is nevertheless the primary football executive.

Earlier this week, Ryan said on PFT Live that Cunningham is the Atlanta G.M. “I think in every facet of the word, Ian’s a General Manager in this league,” Ryan said.

The Bears’ effort to change the NFL’s mind included a trip by owner George McCaskey, team president and CEO Kevin Warren, and G.M. Ryan Poles to New York for a visit with Commissioner Roger Goodell. It ultimately didn’t matter.

It’s no surprise. The league would have had to admit it got it wrong in the first place. Throw in the recent assault on the Rooney Rule by the Florida attorney general, and a decision to give the Bears the picks would have created a potential political problem for the league — possibly in the form of a late-night social-media assault focusing on something other than the new kickoff formation.

Every NFL team wants to create an edge for itself, in every way possible. It requires an understanding of the rules, the limits of the rules, and the manner in which any loopholes can be exploited.

The Raiders have taken advantage of a fairly glaring loophole in an effort to give quarterback Kirk Cousins $20 million for 2026 while only paying him $11.3 million.

It happened like this. The Falcons owed quarterback Kirk Cousins $10 million for 2026, subject to offset. Other quarterbacks in recent years who have been cut with remaining guarantees (Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, Tua Tagovailoa) signed one-year deals for the minimum salary, sticking their former teams for the balance.

As to Cousins, his market value exceeded $10 million. When the Falcons didn’t cut Cousins after the 2024 season (despite a Sunday Splash! report from December 2024 that they were expected to do so), some concluded that the Falcons were content to guarantee $10 million for 2026 since he likely would get more than $10 million on the open market, allowing the Falcons to escape the final installment.

Enter the loophole. If the Raiders had signed Cousins to a one-year, $20 million deal, Las Vegas would have owed Cousins all of it — and the Falcons would have owed nothing. Instead, the Raiders paid Cousins $1.3 million this year, with a $10 million full guarantee in 2027.

As mentioned on Thursday, it seems too easy. Too convenient. Too obvious that the Raiders came up with a way to get Cousins to $20 million while paying only $11.3 million of it.

Albert Breer of SI has wondered aloud whether the league will attempt to close that loophole. Frankly, it’s amazing the loophole even exists.

It’s something other teams could have been doing, whenever a player has guaranteed money from another team. Pay him the minimum now, and promise more later.

Legitimate or not under current rules, it seems as if the Raiders have pulled a fast one. Which should — as Michael Holley said on Friday’s PFT Live — dry any lingering crocodile tears regarding the Ravens’ decision not to proceed with the Maxx Crosby trade.

The rules are the rules. The rules allowed the Ravens to back out of the Crosby deal, at any time and for any reason before the trade became official. The rules apparently allowed the Raiders to find a way to pay Cousins more than the $10 million he was guaranteed to receive from the Falcons this year by putting the Falcons on the hook for $8.7 million.

All’s fair in love, war, and football. And every NFL team needs to know the rules. To understand how to use them to their advantage. And, more importantly, to have a plan for keeping those rules from being used against them.

Kirk Cousins has made $321 million in 14 NFL seasons. At his most recent team, he got the best per-game rate of his career by far.

The final tally for his time in Atlanta goes like this: $98.7 million for 22 starts.

It works out to $4.49 million per start.

The total haul comes from the $90 million he received over the first two seasons, plus the $8.7 million the Falcons will pay from his guaranteed compensation of $10 million for 2026.

If not for the torn ACL suffered in November by Michael Penix Jr., Cousins would have started only 15 games. Which would have pushed the rate to $6.58 million per game.

Those final seven starts went a long way toward creating his opportunity with the Raiders. He went 5-2, with four straight wins to end the season. The final kick included upset wins over the Buccaneers and Rams in prime time.

His playing time in 2026 remains TBD. The Raiders presumably will be picking Fernando Mendoza, three weeks from tonight. The question becomes whether and to what extent Cousins will serve as a bridge quarterback until Mendoza is ready to go.