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Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

TL:DR: The roster is talented enough to win the weak division, but overall this is a foundation building year for the new FO to see what they do and don’t have with eyes on 2027. 

LAST SEASON: The Falcons went 8-9 and were one of the most confusing teams in the league. This was a team that beat the Bills and Rams and were a missed XP away from taking the AFC Champs to OT. This same team also lost to the Jets and got blown out by the Dolphins. They were poorly coached and each week was a complete guess on which team would show up. On the positive side of things, the Falcons had an insane draft class that produced 4 starters, 2 of which were up for DROY. Jeff Ulbrich was also able to produce a defense that saw the 2^nd most sacks in the league with a bunch of JAGs and a couple of the rookies mentioned above.

OFFSEASON: Cleaned house (except for Ulbrich) and completely re-organized the front office structure. Rich McKay was removed from his role, and Matt Ryan was brought into a new, but similar role. Stefanski is brought in from Cleveland and our new GM from Chicago. I don’t have much of an opinion on Stef, I do feel that he was set up to fail in Cleveland, but there’s no way he doesn’t share some of the blame for those last couple of seasons. We stayed relatively quiet in free agency when we didn’t need to and outside of losing Kaden Elliss (which I think a lot of our fans are underselling the impact), we basically replaced JAGs with JAGs. Draft class was small, but I do like our first two picks pairing Avieon Terrell with his brother and grabbing Zachariah Branch from UGA who I think will be an immediate impact. Oh and new uniforms which don't look like they were made by a teenager circa 2005.

OFFENSE: The OL is solid, London is a top 10 WR, Pitts quietly had an All-Pro year, Bijan doesn’t need any explaining, and I love the Zachariah Branch pick and think he’s going to do serious damage from the slot. Issue though is that we are paper thin at WR. If London has to miss time as he did last year, we’ve got a whole lot of nothing behind him. Now for the elephant in the room; QB. Penix was nowhere near as bad as some seem to think he was, but he still wasn’t good. It’s tough to give up on him cause when he flashes it looks incredible, but he just looks so raw at times which is concerning given his age and experience. Tua…don’t really have an opinion there. I think he’s nothing more than a one-year rental and a contingency plan. If we can get just average QB play, there’s no reason this offense can’t be a top 10 unit, but that’s a massive if.

DEFENSE: As mentioned above, Ulbrich got the most out of a bunch of rookies and JAGs. Pearce (who is innocent of the charges bestowed upon him) became the first rookie since Parsons to have double digit sacks and Xavier Watts was up for DROY and made he and Bates one of the best safety duos in the league. Then there’s Jalon Walker who, despite no accolades, looked like a future defensive captain by years end. Having said that, we are very weak in the interior and that got exposed on the ground a lot last season and I don’t feel that we remedied that in the offseason. We also lost the QB of our defense in Kaden Elliss and he was not replaced in-kind. We’re very thin at CB so like the WR situation, if someone goes down we’ve got nothing behind them.

CONCLUSION: Overall, I see this as a foundation building year and I think the FO does as well based on how they didn’t spend in free agency when they could have and let guys walk when they didn’t need to. There’re just too many question marks around the QB position and the new coaching staff for me to confidently predict anything. Things open up in a massive way in 2027 where we will have over $100M in cap space along with 9 draft picks so I think this year they want to sit back, shake out the chaff, and see if it’s worth moving forward with Penix. If not, 2027 has a super deep QB class (on paper). Having said that, I do think we have the best top to bottom roster in the division so I won’t be surprised at all if we’re sitting as the champions at years end – but you could say that about any NFC South team. I’d put our floor at 5 wins and ceiling at 10.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

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Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to WATERCOOLERWEDNESDAY on WATERCOOLERWEDNESDAY.

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welcome 2 the land of dick n balls. dont let the door hit ya where the lord split ya 🙏 god bless

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

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Welcome to today's free talk thread.

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Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

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Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to WATERCOOLERWEDNESDAY on WATERCOOLERWEDNESDAY.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

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Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

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Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

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Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

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Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to today's free talk thread.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

Memes, shitposts, funny copypastas, unfunny copypastas, and manningface are 100% allowed.

Welcome to WATERCOOLERWEDNESDAY on WATERCOOLERWEDNESDAY.

Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry and hate speech are not allowed.

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