The Atlanta Falcons brought in competition this offseason for quarterback Michael Penix Jr., as the former first-round pick recovers from the third ACL surgery since college. While NFL training camp will ultimately determine who is the Falcons starting quarterback in Week 1, there’s an early front-runner.

Josh Kendall of The Athletic wrote in a mailbag ahead of Falcons training camp that while he doesn’t know who will come out on top of Atlanta’s quarterback competition, right now he ultimately believes it will be Tua Tagovailoa out there against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In June, first-year Falcons head coach Kevin Stefanski said...

The Buffalo Bills under general manager/team president Brandon Beane have found quite a few late-round gems in the NFL Draft. It’s been a point of joking—with some doses of seriousness—that Beane’s late-round draft picks have almost been more effective than his premium picks.

At cornerback, for example, the Bills drafted Christian Benford in the sixth round after already having selected Kaiir Elam in round one back in the 2022 NFL Draft. It’s fortunate that they did, too, because Elam has been a complete bust in his professional career, while Benford has risen to near-stardom in his.

So, when the Bills...

Though he just took over the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator job this offseason, Christian Parker is already seen as a top candidate for a future head coaching gig, per NFL Network’s Cameron Wolfe.

Parker, 34, arrived in Dallas after a successful two-year stint as the Eagles’ secondary coach and passing game coordinator. Nick Sirianni‘s staff has already produced three new head coaches since 2023 – Jonathan Gannon, Shane Steichen, and Kellen Moore – and Parker could be the latest to take on a top job.

“He is on a direct path to being a head coach in this league,” Wolfe said....

The bar was set high for Colston Loveland when he was selected by the Chicago Bears with the 10th overall pick in last year’s draft. It may have taken some time for the offense to get going, but by the end of the year, Loveland was easily one of Caleb Williams’ most sought-after and dependable targets in the passing game. Clutch catches leading to critical first downs, and a thrilling game-winning touchdown against the Cincinnati Bengals highlighted a rookie campaign from Loveland that saw the Michigan product amass 713 receiving yards on 58 catches, with 6 scores. The production has...

Somehow we’re almost half way through the month of July, which means that the New York Giants 2026 training camp is in sight. And with the start of training camp we get a return of real football news and start to see the 2026 Giants take shape.

New head coach John Harbaugh laid down the team goal of winning the NFC East in his introductory press conference. Winning the division is, of course, every team’s goal. But for the Giants, that’s seemed like a distant hope. After all, the Giants have won just seven games in the last two years...

Daniel Jones appears ready to go for training camp.

Jones said via video from James Boyd of TheAthletic.com that he has been “cleared to do everything” as he continues his recovery from the Achilles injury he suffered last season. Jones had already progressed to 7-on-7 work during the Colts’ offseason program, and he is expected to be a full participant when training camp opens.

That is an important first step for both Jones and the Colts.

Indianapolis re-signed Jones this offseason hoping he could bring stability to a quarterback room that has been unsettled for years. Anthony Richardson’s future with...

Jets

The Jets acquired DL Jowon Briggs from the Browns in 2025, and he recorded 4 sacks, 8 tackles for loss, and 38 tackles last season. Briggs thinks he has a better understanding of the game as he enters the third year of his career.

“Any chance I get to expand my football repertoire, it’s always open arms,” Briggs said, via Jack Bell of the team’s site. *“I mean, it’s just a good challenge, because the more I know about football, this is Year 3 for me, the more I know, the more I can do. And it’s as...

The Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense certainly didn’t live up to expectations in 2025. While it wasn’t the sole reason, it likely played a hand in Mike Tomlin’s decision to part ways with the franchise after the season ended, which also led to the departure of Teryl Austin. Now, Patrick Graham steps in as defensive coordinator, hoping […]

What is it that they say about assuming?

Jumping to conclusions is a dangerous game. We have all done it, and we all will again, but declaring anything to be this or that has burned us all in the past. Sometimes that’s the way things go.

When these things work out we feel like geniuses. We knew it all along! No one could have ever predicted what we did!

But when we are incorrect… well, that isn’t a very fun feeling.

This is more about the latter.

The Cowboys assumption most likely to be wrong

What would you say...

Now that our top plays are in the books, I’d like to offer one final coda to our look back at last season.

2025 was really dumb.

I wrote in the conclusion to our top play of 2025 that everything after Keisean Nixon’s interception capped off the Packers’ win over the Bears in Week 14 seems pretty forgettable. That’s not to undermine the work of my colleague Tyler Brooke, who rightly celebrated Matthew Golden’s touchdown against the Bears in the playoffs. That should have been a game-sealing touchdown, and yet, well, we all know what happened.

Nixon’s interception really does...

Yesterday, we delivered grades for the 14 participants in the Windy City Gridiron Dynasty League. Today, we are going to start a series assessing all 14 rosters and their strengths and weaknesses. The first person up is Dan Meehan. Dan has been a regular on our sister podcast network, 2nd City Gridiron, where he’s hosted a podcast for the last few years. He’s an avid college football fan and knows draft prospects very well.

He’s been a middling team in the league for several years. He has a good team, but rarely fields a team that is a true title...

The potential unretirement of Aaron Donald has been one of the bigger offseason storylines across the NFL. The speculation started around when the Los Angeles Rams traded for Myles Garrett. Until that trade, there was no real sense that Donald had any plans to suit up in the NFL again, but after that move, fans speculated, talking heads speculated, and Donald still hasn’t given a hard “no” or a hard “yes” to lining up with Garrett in 2026 as the speculation continues. Until Donald says, “no” (if he says no), the speculation isn’t going away.

Though Donald has been retired...