It’s been an offseason of major change for the Atlanta Falcons. After missing the playoffs on a three-way tiebreaker with the Carolina Panthers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2025, Atlanta fired head coach Raheem Morris and replaced him with Kevin Stefanski, who was let go by the Cleveland Browns this offseason. Then, the Falcons made a change at the most important position; with Michael Penix Jr. still not fully recovered from the torn ACL that ended his 2025 season in Week 11 and 2025 backup Kirk Cousins now on the Las Vegas Raiders, Atlanta signed Tua Tagovailoa after he’d been released by the Miami Dolphins earlier in the day. Tagovailoa is set to start the Falcons’ season opener on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.
Atlanta’s decision to opt for Tagovailoa over Cooper Rush became clear after it was announced that Penix wasn’t quite healthy, but it’ll still have fantasy implications for the rest of the Falcons’ starters, including running back Bijan Robinson and wide receiver Drake London. Given that Robinson finished as RB2 and London as WR18 in 2025 and that London has been drafted as the WR7 this season, Tagovailoa’s status as the starter will impact lots of fantasy lineups.
London enjoyed a pretty strong first nine games of the season, totaling 60 receptions for 810 yards and six touchdowns despite missing the Week 7 matchup against Tagovailoa’s Miami Dolphins with a hip sprain. However, after returning from a later four-game absence due to a knee sprain, London managed just eight catches from 18 targets for 109 yards and a score over the final three weeks of the season. He clearly has chemistry with Penix, who was the quarterback for nine of his 10 highest-yardage games in 2025 and two of his three highest-yardage games in 2024, so it would be reasonable to presume that his fantasy ceiling could dip with Tagovailoa under center.
I’m not sure that the sample size is large enough to make that a reasonable conclusion. Last season, per PFF, Tagovailoa posted the sixth-worst offensive grades among 38 qualified quarterbacks, and Penix ranked fourth-to-last. Furthermore, Penix is more mobile than Tagovailoa, so the gulf between the two quarterbacks was wider when only considering passes; Tagovailoa ranked 29th of 40 signal-callers and Penix 36th. Atlanta also had a significantly better offensive line than Miami did, and among quarterbacks with at least 100 pressured and 100 non-pressured dropbacks, Tagovailoa had the 10th-worst passing grade and Penix the third-worst mark. In 2025, London was the most effective on throws down the left sideline between zero and nine yards beyond the line of scrimmage and throws between the numbers of more than 20 air yards; while Penix was slightly more efficient in the former range, Tagovailoa throws a far better deep ball.
Neither quarterback is good, but Tagovailoa is better, and although new play-caller Tommy Rees didn’t exactly shepherd an elite passing game after Week 10 last season with the Cleveland Browns, there was only so much he could do with Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders — the two worst qualified starters in football last season — under center. London saw a higher target share while playing with Penix than he did while playing with Cousins, but Tagovailoa, too, is known for locking in on his top target once he develops trust with him; Tyreek Hill ranked among the league’s top three in receptions in each of his three seasons playing alongside Tagovailoa. He spread around the ball a little bit more in 2024 and 2025, but Hill still put up decent production in 2024 before missing most of 2025 with an injury.
I’d still call London a must-start against Pittsburgh. The Steelers ranked just 16th in Expected Points Added on passing plays last season, and because opponents were wary of their front seven, they allowed the fourth-most fantasy points per game to wide receivers. Pittsburgh also recorded the 13th-worst coverage grades by PFF’s standards last season, and while the Steelers smartly brought in Jamel Dean, who posted the fifth-highest overall grade among 112 cornerbacks (14th of 109 in coverage grades), London is more likely to spend snaps going up against the weaker Joey Porter Jr. Plus, while Dean did a good job against London the last time they played, in Week 1 of the 2025 season, London hauled in both of his passes for 20 yards against Dean in Week 5 of the 2024 season en route to a 12-catch, 154-yard, one-score masterpiece.
