Falcons’ risky move could net top-5 pick for Rams

The Falcons are betting they’ll be good, but the Rams are praying they aren’t

Find someone who believes in you as much as the Atlanta Falcons believe in themselves. The Falcons had a losing record last season, they are handing the offense over to a quarterback with three career starts, the head coach is looking for his first winning season since 2010, and Vegas projected just 7.5 wins in 2025 following a “lackluster” free agency in which the team was also unable to trade Kirk Cousins.

Despite these and other facts about the current state of their franchise, Atlanta was the second-boldest team in the draft by trading a 2026 first round pick to the L.A. Rams in order to double-down on their biggest weakness, edge rushers. General manager Terry Fontenot, who is 0-for-4 in attempts to have a winning season on the job, doesn’t make that move if he believes he has a five-year plan in front of him.

Fearful that his hot seat will explode if the Falcons do not win games immediately (the last GM and HC were fired after an 0-5 start in 2020), Fontenot is betting that the team is good enough to make the playoffs and make fans forget that he traded the future for James Pearce.

I would be willing to take that bet against Fontenot. If he’s wrong, the Rams might not just get a first round pick, but a top-5 pick if the Falcons are every bit as bad as they could possibly be next season.

Here are the reasons that Fontenot’s bet was too risky for Atlanta:

The Falcons were not a good team in 2024

It would be a different story if the team making this bet was the Lions, Eagles, or Chiefs. Basically, any franchise that is consistently in the playoffs and wanting to strike twice in the first round. That is not the case in Atlanta and if anything, their 8-9 record was GENEROUS.

Out of eight wins:

• Swept the Bucs in two close games, one in OT, a team that didn’t win a playoff game
• Beat the Eagles by one point when they didn’t have A.J. Brown
• Did not beat any other teams that had a winning record in 2024
• Split season series against 5-12 teams Carolina and New Orleans
• Beat 4-13 Raiders
• Beat 3-14 Giants
• Beat 7-10 Cowboys

The Falcons are not coming out of a good season, or even really a promising one. They had to bench the quarterback who they invested $90 million guaranteed into, emphasizing a MAJOR weakness in the pro scouting department. They finished 28th in points per drive allowed despite hiring a defensive-minded head coach in Raheem Morris, and their response to that letdown was to fire defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake and hire Jeff Ulbrich after he was part of the Jets cleaning house last season.

Maybe the Atlanta Falcons will be a better team in 2025 because of their reactions to their weaknesses, such as switching to Michael Penix, hiring Ulbrich, and investing two first round picks into their defense. That could happen.

That doesn’t change the fact that the Falcons were simply a bad team last season and so if they are the same or worse, they will continue to be a bad team. They will only be a good team if these changes make them A LOT better.

Michael Penix is still a gamble

You can be the biggest fan of Michael Penix in the world, you’d still have to admit that until the hour that he was drafted eighth overall, there were still countless draft experts who believed he would be a second round pick. Including ESPN’s Matt Miller:

“I have a second-round grade (on Penix). I have him as my No. 36 overall player,” Miller told Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk on Wednesday. “I’m not one of those people that artificially puts quarterbacks just at the top.”

And Bleacher Report:

Taking Penix at No. 8 is awful resource allocation. It’s also downright atrocious value. The Bleacher Report Scouting Department didn’t even have Penix graded as a first-round prospect. This is a failure on every single level.

And The Athletic, just one of many publications that was skeptical of Penix for reasons that go beyond his injury history, although that’s a potentially huge problem too:

But there are questions here: his age, his health (he’s had multiple leg injuries), his consistency as an accurate passer and the fact Cousins is making a fortune. Penix doesn’t throw the ball over the middle with nearly the same confidence he shows outside the numbers. He’s going to have to figure out better answers versus pressure.

Just because a quarterback is picked in the first round, it does not make him a “first round talent” in the eyes of everybody. That’s still something to be proved. Penix, J.J. McCarthy, and Bo Nix were surprising top-12 picks last year and thus far we’ve only seen Nix have some success.

But if anything, Nix proves that quarterbacks need great coaching and PATIENCE: Going into the last month of the season, Nix was one of the lowest-ranked starting QBs in the NFL by almost any major category.

Then Nix added 19 passing touchdowns to his resume over the last seven games…including 4 against the Falcons in a 38-6 rout, by the way. (And 4 more in a season finale against the Chiefs, in which K.C. didn’t even show up.)

Penix made three starts as a rookie and though expectations must be measured against the circumstances, which is that he was making his NFL debut and on a bad team, we didn’t see anything more than the “tantalizing flashes of talent” that made him a top-10 pick. However, nobody has ever doubted Penix’s ability to flash an elite arm. It’s the weaknesses that scared some teams away from Penix as a first round prospect and there’s no indication yet that Atlanta has fixed those issues.

Through three starts, including two against two of the worst teams in the NFL (Panthers, Giants), Penix finished with 58% completions, 3 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, and a passer rating of 78.9 with two fumbles.

Maybe Penix will emerge as one of the best quarterbacks in the NFC next season:

That could happen. But just because it could happen, doesn’t mean that it will happen and we see a lot more prospects underwhelm at the sport’s hardest position than we do see them emerge as stars.

If Penix does not emerge as a star, the Falcons either turn back to Kirk Cousins or bet the farm on Easton Stick and in either case that likely makes Atlanta a team without many wins.

Are they better than their opponents?

Schedule is often as important as talent in the NFL, and the Falcons draw some of the most talented teams in the NFL next season:

• 10+ win teams: Bucs (2x), Rams, Bills, Commanders, Vikings*, Seahawks
• .500ish teams: Cardinals*, Colts*, Dolphins
• Potential rebound team: 49ers*
• Rest of schedule: Panthers (2x), Saints (2x), Jets, Patriots

*on the road

The Falcons would also qualify as a .500ish team, so they could either get a little better, stay the same, or get worse. In that respect, the Falcons are not any different than the Cardinals, Colts, and Dolphins, three teams that Atlanta might beat next season.

But if the Falcons are not better than they were last season, against this schedule they would just go 7-10 or 8-9 again. Maybe worse.

And if the Falcons start bad, owner Arthur Blank may do what he did in 2020 and just fire everybody again. A team that admits weakness in the middle of the season could just get weaker as the season goes on.

Actually, the Falcons started to look weak immediately after the draft when they were blamed for prank calling prospects such as Shedeur Sanders and the team was fined for it this week:

Will Atlanta be able to rebound before the season?

The Falcons have the potential of a 12-loss season

Since finishing 8-9 last season and only beating one team with a winning record outside of the division, the Falcons haven’t given us any reason to expect better.

They have the same head coach, an unproven quarterback, they lost their starting center in free agency (one of the top centers in the NFL), they didn’t address needs at wide receiver, they’re probably going to have to start both rookie edge rushers right away, and even former Ram Morgan Fox is competing for a starting role on the defensive line.

Unless Atlanta gets significant improvement from unexpected places, it would seem that .500ish is the ceiling and bottoming out is the floor:

• 12 losses would likely net a top-10 pick
• 13 losses netted a top-6 pick this past year
• 14 losses is in competition for the top pick in the draft

How far were the Falcons from 12 losses last season when they went 8-9?

If you flipped every win in OT or by 2 points or less, then Atlanta would have been 5-12 last season.

If you also flipped every win by 6 points or less, then the Falcons would have been 2-15.

Other than beating the Panthers 38-20 and the Giants 34-7, Atlanta didn’t have any other convincing wins in the course of the entire season. Yet Fontenot is betting his job — or perhaps losing it — on this trade because he might not see another way out.

How did the Rams trade the 26th pick for this luck?

Without trading away a top-10 pick or even moving down so a team could go up for a QB, the Rams managed to have arguably the biggest steal of the first round aside from what the Browns were able to get for Travis Hunter.

The Falcons may have traded a top-5 pick for a late first rounder. If so, at least Fontenot won’t be around to have to face the consequences of that bet.