The Falcoholic
There is no ideal solution when you lose your starting right tackle and top reserve right tackle right before the NFL regular season. You can only try to weather that loss as best you can, either with in-house options or by going outside the organization for help.
The Atlanta Falcons did a little of both after losing Kaleb McGary for the season and Storm Norton for at least the first few weeks of 2025. They shifted Elijah Wilkinson back to right tackle, the position he primarily played early in his career, and will be working to get practice squad option Brandon Parker and rookie Jack Nelson ready in case they need to play. They also traded for Michael Jerrell, a former small school right tackle who made a few starts for Seattle in 2024, and signed both ex-Jets tackle Carter Warren and ex-Dolphins tackle Ryan Hayes to their practice squad. The hope is that in that group of six guys, you find a workable solution until Norton is ready, and potentially one or two long-term pieces to give you more depth the next time something like this happens.
We don’t know who will wind up being the long-term swing tackle out of this group—if it’s anyone!—but we do have a pretty good idea who’s going to start. That would be Wilkinson, a player who has had a fascinating career that has seen him go from undrafted free agent to starting tackle to starting left guard to reserve and back to starting tackle again. Why Wilkinson, though, and what can we expect?
It comes down to experience, comfort, and a lack of other compelling options.
On the experience front, Wilkinson is a 20 game starter at right tackle, split between the Broncos and Bears earlier in his career. He has never been a great right tackle—he was better at right guard for Denver and left guard for Atlanta than at right tackle at any point in his career—but can offer stretches of quality pass protection. He’s going to need some help, which the Falcons will likely give him with Charlie Woerner, Feleipe Franks, and/or Teagan Quitoriano at times during the first few games, but the Falcons are counting on him weathering the storm there. They’ve seen his tape as a starter at right tackle and are comfortable with it, even though that version of Wilkinson came several years ago.
Wilkinson was graded better in 2019 than 2020, despite getting flagged with a rough nine penalties (three of which were accepted) versus just one penalty in 2020. He played over 800 snaps at right tackle in 2019 and earned a 59.7 grade from Pro Football Focus and a 62 in pass protection, despite also being credited with 10 sacks allowed and 32 pressures. In 2020, he was penalized just once and allowed just one sack on 18 pressure on 500 snaps at right tackle, which we can hope was partially due to growing comfort with the role. His...
