The Falcoholic
Preseason has always been ugly, but it’s gotten uglier over the past decade as teams stop viewing it as an essential part of the league calendar and start treating it as a way to get reserves and roster hopefuls a lot of run. Teams really don’t care about winning, many don’t play their starters at all, and secrecy-obsessed squads rarely use it to try out any wrinkles in their playbooks. It’s generally a slog aside from a handful of heroic efforts from players getting extended run and doing something with it.
So the Atlanta Falcons, viewed through that prism, have a limited number of tasks to accomplish in their preseason opener against the Detroit Lions. With Michael Penix and Kirk Cousins sitting and many others likely set to join them, the Falcons want to emerge from this week healthy, with a better idea of how position battles are proceeding, and knowing what roster tweaks they want to make, if any. Let’s talk a little more about those three items.
We can debate the merits of preseason reps all we want—I’m much more open to the idea that playing half or full games means something than “the starters get one drive”—but good health is still priority number one. Last year, the major injuries to DeMarcco Hellams and Bralen Trice impacted the trajectory of the Falcons season, with the team choosing to use significant draft capital and dollars to get Matthew Judon and sign Justin Simmons, both of whom had disappointing seasons by their standards. Particularly for players you intend to rely on, a preseason injury can derail things for a team.
Of course, health is out of the team’s control to some extent, but they’re going to elect to park most of their starters and cross their fingers with key reserves, and I hope that works.
It sounds a bit cruel, but there are probably anywhere from five-to-fifteen players on this roster today who are going to struggle meaningfully in the first preseason game. If those players were already tabbed to be at the bottom of the 90 man roster, the Falcons will likely cut ties with a small number of those players
For a team with depth questions, it’s very well worth it to churn the bottom of the roster and bring in any players who might interest you, giving them a preseason game or two of runway to prove they belong on your practice squad. Demone Harris in 2023, Abdullah Anderson and MyCole Pruitt in 2022, and Luke Stocker in 2020 are all examples of players who signed after the first wave of training camp practices and/or the first preseason game and went on to have real roles for Atlanta, something that’s only possible when the team decides it’s had a long enough look at a player or two currently on the roster.
The Falcons won’t make sweeping changes to players 70-to-90 based on a single...
