The Falcoholic
The general manager of the Atlanta Falcons for the past five seasons has been canned. Terry Fontenot came in to oversee a rebuild-we-don’t-call-a-rebuild back in 2021 and was tasked with creating a sustainable winner out of the wreckage of the Dan Quinn/Thomas Dimitroff era. Instead, he’ll leave the job having overseen five straight losing seasons, presiding over a roster-building era where the Falcons acquired plenty of compelling talent but were never able to put together a winning squad.
With this firing, the Falcons will now be rebuilding their front office for the second time in the past six years.
Fontenot’s tenure will be defined by the big swings. He took Kyle Pitts at No. 4 in the 2021 NFL Draft, the highest a tight end has ever been taken, and has gotten something like TE10-TE16 production out of the frustrating but talented Pitts. He took Bijan Robinson at No. 8 in 2023 despite having a 1,000 yard rusher in Tyler Allgeier, seeking to build an offensive juggernaut that has not come to fruition despite Robinson’s individual excellent. He both took Michael Penix Jr. at No. 8 in the 2024 NFL Draft and signed Kirk Cousins to a massive free agent deal, and now Penix is dealing with an ACL injury while Cousins plays out the string before the team cuts ties with him in the 2026 offseason. And he traded a 2026 first round pick to go up and get James Pearce Jr. to pair with Jalon Walker, a move that has and will pay dividends for the defense, but cost Atlanta a premium draft selection that landed at pick 13.
Most of those big swings were either failures or still have question marks around the players involved or the value surrendered to get them, in other words, which obscured some of the fine work Fontenot did in free agency. He and his front office were consistently able to scoop contributors out of unexpected places, like Cordarrelle Patterson at running back, Dee Alford out of the CFL, and LaCale London out of the XFL. He brought aboard David Onyemata, Kaden Elliss, Jessie Bates, Mike Hughes, and other extremely useful players for this defense, and pried loose some core players from the draft’s second day, from Ruke Orhorhoro to Matthew Bergeron to Zach Harrison. His tenure was not, in other words, an unmitigated disaster.
But he leaves having made enough mistakes that this team is still further away from contention than the number of dollars, big trades, and draft picks should have made possible. Fontenot and his hand-picked draft guru, Kyle Smith, routinely missed on late round players, with only Billy Bowman Jr. and Brandon Dorlus looking like potential impact players from rounds four through seven. Because he shared the Tradin’ Thomas Dimitroff ethos of moving up to get the guy you want, the team routinely was down a pick or two that could’ve been used elsewhere to shore up depth. And some of Fontenot’s depth signings, particularly at the receiver...
