‘4 Downs’ with Rich: the Atlanta Falcons’ Biggest Questions Heading into the ‘26 NFL Season

The Falcons closed last season well enough to win the NFC South and did not, swooning through the middle months and costing Raheem Morris his job in the process. Four questions decide whether 2026 goes differently.

First down starts with the best player on the roster and a ceiling nobody wants to say out loud. Forget offensive player of the year. Can Bijan be the NFL MVP?

The award has calcified into a quarterback prize, and Rich knows it. But he is not asking whether Bijan wins it. He is asking whether Bijan belongs in the conversation.

"Will he be a finalist and a legitimate shot for it?" Rich said. Yes. He should be. Bijan did what he did last season on fewer than 300 touches, and the vulture is gone now, with Cordarrelle Patterson no longer around to steal goal-line carries and Allgeier in Arizona. Running backs have won this thing before. It has just been a while since Adrian Peterson or LT punched through.

Second down is the question Atlanta gets asked every single summer. Who is rushing the passer?

James Pierce was arrested, and while he is back with the team, a suspension remains possible. That matters more than it would elsewhere, because of what the Falcons paid to get him. They traded away a future first-round pick to land Pierce, and that pick is the one the Rams turned into their first-round choice this year, the one that generated a whole conversation on this show about Los Angeles not doing enough with it.

Pierce delivered on the field, with double-digit sacks as a rookie. Then came the trouble. It looked like Atlanta had finally checked the box on pass rush. Now nobody knows.

Third down is about the new man in charge of the offense. What does Kevin Stefanski bring to the equation?

He arrives as a two-time coach of the year out of Cleveland with a system that, when it clicks, a lot of the league envies. He inherits an offense that just produced breakout seasons for Bijan, Kyle Pitts and Drake London. The questions are less about scheme than about everything surrounding it. How does he run the locker room? How does he run the team? What happens when Mr. Blank is on line one?

Stefanski is walking into a genuinely different organization. Matt Ryan is a team president now, not an emergency camp arm. This is a new top-down structure, and Stefanski is the choice to be the on-field version of it.

Fourth down is the obvious one. Who wins the quarterback competition?

That is another Stefanski call, and worth remembering that Stefanski was not in the building when Penix was drafted. Neither is the general manager who drafted him. New GM, new president, new way of doing things.

Penix is a good kid, and Rich is not writing him off. But there is a case sitting right there for Tua, and it starts with the building. Tua made the throw to DeVonta Smith that changed the course of his career in that stadium, indoors, on that turf.

Then there is what he did there last year. Against Atlanta, Tua went 20 for 26 for 205 yards and four touchdowns in a 34 to 10 win. In 2021 he threw four touchdowns in that stadium too.

He is comfortable there. Health being equal, the feeling here is that Atlanta finds out what it has in Tua before it turns back to Penix, the same way J.J. McCarthy waits while his franchise finds out what it has in Kyler Murray. T.J. pushed back on that one, saying he hears McCarthy and Murray is a far closer competition than this one. We shall find out.