Atlanta Falcons offseason grade: Team keeps trading on risky business

If there’s one thing the Atlanta Falcons aren’t in need of, it’s confidence. The 2025 offseason marked the second straight year the organization approached its decision making under the guise that this team is a serious contender, only needing to make a few tweaks to get over the hump. That didn’t pan out in 2024, with Kirk Cousins struggling and getting injured, before the keys were handed over to Michael Penix Jr. in an effort to turn it into a teaching moment.

Time will tell if the Falcons’ confidence is actually hubris, because the NFC South is a weak enough division where anything is possible, but today we look at every move of the offseason to see what Atlanta has done correctly, and incorrectly since the season ended.

The biggest change the Falcons made was on the defensive side of the ball by firing coordinator Jimmy Lake after one season in his role. This was absolutely the correct move.

Atlanta’s defense took a huge step back under Lake, moving from 11th in the league in yards allowed in 2023, to 23rd in 2024. Lake didn’t have a grasp on how to utilize the team’s key defensive players, and this often left them feeling like non-factors, when they should have been difference makers.

Along with this the team fired defensive line coach Jay Rogers after the team managed a paltry 31.0 sacks on the year.

Head coach Raheem Morris made smart moves by hiring Jeff Ulbrich to become defensive coordinator, and Nate Ollie to lead the defensive line. Ulbrich was the former interim head coach of the Jets, and before that the DC himself under Robert Saleh. This looks to be a significant upgrade on both accounts, and I like the hirings.

Grade: B+

Atlanta didn’t have a lot of money to spend in free agency, and it shows. The Falcons made their big splash by signing Cousins in 2024, and that ate a majority of their cap space. Instead the team elected to shore up its current group of talent, and really only spent money on two players: LB Deablo Divine, whose name is better than his play — and OLB Leonard Floyd, formerly with the Rams.

Floyd will be a solid leader to assist the young players the team drafted, who we’ll get to in a second. Top to bottom though, this team didn’t do a lot to improve in free agency simply because they couldn’t.

Grade: C-

Hoo boo is there a lot to dig into here. I’ll be the first to say that I hated what this team did in the draft after they took Jalon Walker with the No. 15 pick. Walker was a fantastic pick and value where the team got him, and it was a home run.

Deciding to mortgage the future for James Pearce Jr. is where this class went off the rails. Obviously the team believed in him, and that’s great — but from what we heard around the league enough teams had fully removed Pearce from their boards due to personality concerns that he might have been available for them in the second round anyway.

So this is where evaluating this class from an offseason report card gets difficult. On the one hand the Falcons don’t deserve high marks for hurting their future, but on the other they are going to get noticably better on pass rush with these two guys on the roster. In the end we’ll split it down the middle.

Grade: B-

It all comes back to that confidence issue this franchise seems to have. The Falcons truly believe they have the potential to make a deep playoff run that nobody else seems to see but them. Time will tell whether or not the additions on defense are enough, or if Michael Penix Jr. can be the franchise QB this team is looking for.

If the Falcons pull it off they’re the geniuses in the room, but there’s not a lot pointing to that being the case. As it stands the Falcons look to be mixing it up in the middle of the pack in the NFC South, and hoping they can be a 10 win team.

Grade: C+