How the Falcons New Head Coach Can Set Flight for the Team’s Offense in 2026

It’s been yet another disappointing year for the Atlanta Falcons. This is now the eighth straight season of finishing under the .500 mark and missing out on the postseason. Former Falcons head coach Raheem Morris was shown the door after back-to-back 8-9 seasons, leaving the team shopping for what will be their third new head coach in six years. In comes two-time Coach of the Year winner, Kevin Stefanski, who was recently fired from the Cleveland Browns after finishing with a 5-12 record in 2025. There will be a lot of questions to be answered for Stefanski as he takes over a team that has been frustratingly inconsistent offensively. However, with a completely new personnel, environment, and regime, the two-time Coach of the Year has the potential to lead this Falcons offense to new heights and find an identity that can help them reach the playoffs for the first time in almost a decade.

Context is very important, and to be completely honest, the Browns were an abject disaster in the 2025 season. Poor offensive line play, poor receiver play, analytically having some of the worst quarterback play in NFL history, and the overall roster is still reeling from being gutted because of the Deshaun Watson trade in 2022, and also paying him a guarantee of $230 million. Cleveland finished 31st in passing yards and 27th in rushing yards in the 2025 season, for an overall 30th-ranked offense in the league. It was obvious that the Browns and Stefanski both needed a change of scenery, and despite winning Coach of the Year twice with them, they went their separate ways with the team firing Stefanski on January 5th, 2026. The former Browns coach finished with an overall record of 45-56 during his six-year tenure, going 8-26 from 2024-2025. Not pretty on face value, and yes, Stefanski has some blame for the Browns' poor offensive play over the past two seasons. However, the sheer lack of offensive talent and especially poor quarterback play were also strong factors in Cleveland’s offensive ineptitude during the latter half of his tenure. Being hired by the Falcons, the talent offensively is night and day compared to his final days in Cleveland.

Coach Stefanski will have his work cut out for him in terms of fixing the inconsistent Falcons offense, but it begins with changing Atlanta’s overall scheme. The Falcons had some of the highest pistol formation rates per game in the entire league while also ranking some of the lowest in terms of running play-action and pre-snap motion. Atlanta was below average in terms of EPA per play on offense in 2025, sitting at an underwhelming 23rd in the NFL. The Falcons also had a poor third-down conversion rate, finishing bottom three in the league in terms of moving the ball past the sticks on third down. Atlanta’s offense as a whole was very underwhelming last year, especially with the massive leap their defense took. Stefanski and the Falcons new regime will have to look for ways to improve the offense if they want to end this almost decade-long playoff drought. 

Let’s start with the obvious talent shift, going from a backfield of injured, but promising rookie Quinshon Judkins and fellow rookie Dylan Sampson to arguably the best running back in the league, Bijan Robinson, who finished his 2025 campaign with over 2,000 scrimmage yards, finishing fourth in Offensive Player of the Year votes, a Pro Bowl, and his first First-Team All-Pro selection. Stefanski has made it apparent that his bread and butter has been his ability to scheme up a good running game. You can go back to the days when Stefanski had four-time Pro-Bowler Nick Chubb, who found immense success under Stefanski’s offensive system. The former second-round pick had multiple 1,000+ yard seasons, along with a monstrous 2022 season in which Chubb finished with 1,525 rushing yards, 13 total touchdowns, and was a Second-Team All-Pro. The aforementioned Judkins had a very successful rookie season despite breaking his ankle and fracturing his fibula during a Week 16 bout with the Buffalo Bills, finishing his rookie year with 827 rushing yards and seven touchdowns in only 14 games played. Wishing the former Ohio State prospect a speedy recovery, but with his success with Judkins, it’s only fitting that Stefanski is now going to coach a running game with an All-Pro like Robinson. The jury is still out on what the Falcons will do with soon-to-be free agent Tyler Allgeier, but the two-time Coach of the Year finds a way to get the moths out of his running backs. With a much better offensive line in Atlanta, Stefanski will more than likely give the Falcons a gritty, ground-and-pound identity in the 2026 NFL season, hoping to build on the Falcons seventh ranked rushing offense from the 2025 season.

In addition to a superstar in Robinson within the running game, the Falcons have the potential to leap with their passing offense as well, led by primary receiver Drake London, who finished his injury-riddled 2025 season with 68 receptions for 919 yards and seven touchdowns, still very impressive despite not playing the entire season. Coach Stefanski, along with offensive coordinator Tommy Rees, will have to find a way to get the most out of the rest of their targets, as the passing game for Atlanta finished a league-average 18th in passing yards per game and a fairly dismal 26th in passing touchdowns per game. With Darnell Mooney having a very down year, not even cracking over 500 receiving yards, and Kyle Pitts having a career year during the last year of his contract, they’ll have to answer a litany of questions about what to do at receiver outside of London. Regardless, London is still a great foundation to build on, alongside the prospect of potentially franchise tagging Pitts to see if he can recreate his 2025 season. Stefanski has always gotten the most out of his tight ends as well, considering his years as the offensive coordinator for the Vikings. Pitts is especially intriguing. We saw last year how rookie Harold Fannin emerged with a fantastic rookie year during David Njoku’s injury-riddled down year. The two-time Coach of the Year knows how to gameplan for his talented tight ends, and we can expect him to do so during the Falcons 2026 season.

This leads us to the dreaded question: What will the Falcons do at quarterback? The question that has been troubling the Falcons ever since the team traded former NFL MVP Matt Ryan away during the 2022 offseason. The same problem he’s had during his Browns tenure will be the same problem Stefanski will have to fix with his new team. The current options are 37-year-old Kirk Cousins and former eighth overall pick Michael Penix Jr. The combination of the two led the Falcons to a rather underwhelming passing game. Penix hasn’t shown much improvement from his rookie year and is coming fresh off a torn ACL, while Cousins has been sometimes hit and mostly miss during his Falcons tenure. With what seems to be a weak quarterback class in both the NFL free agency and NFL draft classes, Stefanski and the Falcons are very limited with their quarterback options, to say the least. That being said, the situation is still much better than Cleveland’s on paper. Both Penix and Cousins were leaps and bounds better than the combination of quarterback play the Browns had to trot out during the 2025 season. Stefanski can scheme a deadly play-action game, which Penix had his highest passing success rate last year, if he can build on the already potent Falcons ground game. The two-time Coach of the Year has the assets and foundation to turn this once underwhelming and inconsistent Falcons offense with no identity into an offense that suffocates opposing defenses with their ground game. The prospects of this future offense could be bright for A-town.