BS Report: Falcons Face Quarterback Questions

For the first time this year, the Atlanta Falcons hit the field for a practice as training camp started in earnest earlier this morning. Up in Flowery Branch. But before they did take the field, there was some bad news. And that is that Tua Tagovailoa, one of the new quarterbacks, is not going to be practicing, at least not yet.

He will have to wait a while, as he’s dealing with a back injury that flared up a couple of days ago, so they’ll have to wait. Now the head coach, Kevin Stefanski, the new head coach, Kevin Stefanski, said that it will be sooner rather than later for Tagovailoa to be back on the field, so that’s good news. But still a little bit of a question mark of course, Tua Tagovailoa is injury history is well documented and you want to get him back on the field for a while as soon as possible.

Because of course, the other quarterback for the Falcons, Michael Penix Jr. Is still limited in his return from his knee situation. So the Falcons also released Trevor Simeon earlier today. And then they turned around and signed Cooper Rush, a quarterback who had been with Dallas. And then last year was with Baltimore. And he was not very good.

But they had to have a quarterback there to be able to take the snaps, because the guys who are expected to play this year, Tagovailoa and Penix, are not available. Not the best way for a new head coach, a new staff, a new team, a new president of football to begin the 2026 season. But they just got to work through it and get Tagovailoa back and hopefully Penix back in a more normal setting as well.

This is going to be the top question for this Falcons team, as we look to what they are going to be dealing with here before the start of the season in early September. These next six weeks are going to show a lot as far as what the quarterback situation will be, how that new quarterback or the returning quarterback, Penix, if it’s him, will work with the receivers Drake, London and of course, the tight end, Kyle Pitts, who has a new contract, as does London.

And of course, they’ve got a pretty good option in the backfield to turn to be Sean Robinson, of course. The line of scrimmage is a little different, so that’ll be a work in progress. But that quarterback is going to be at the top of the list. There’s no question I mean the chemistry that he’s going to be able to have with his skill players and his offensive line will be very important.

How much time will that quarterback get in the preseason and the exhibition games? Of course, the previous coaching staff did not allow many of the regulars to get any time at all in the exhibition games, which is stupid, but we’ll see what happens now with Kevin Stefanski and this new staff and how they allow tongue roll over to kind of repair, of course, where the injury even to start the camp, it’s a little difficult to let him just go because you don’t want him to get hurt again.

So how limited will tongue of to be before the season? And of course, Penix is you’re kind of juggling two balls in the air to see which one will land first to give you that starting quarterback. Of course, that’s the big question for every team. All 32 teams. The NFL is the quarterback situation and the Falcons have some unsettling news to start camp.

So we’ll see how that works out. But look, this is a new staff, new coaching staff, new everything really. It’s it’s really new. This team. I guarantee you, by the time the week one rolls around, this team may have 60% turnover from last year’s roster. So this is a drastically different Falcons team. There are a lot of questions to work through.

A lot on defense, a lot of players who need to be kind of seen and to see what they can do. But make no mistake about it, that quarterback question is going to be at the top of the list for the Falcons before the start of the 2026 season.