The Atlanta Falcons and Tennessee Titans spent a lot of time together this week. The team from Nashville made the trip down to Georgia early in the week and spent Tuesday and Wednesday at Flowery Branch, participating in two days of joint practice before the preseason clash.
The second day in particular was a highly emotional and hotly contested bout. By the time they kicked off against each other on Friday evening at Mercedes Benz Stadium, both teams were highly familiar with one another.
The Falcons seemed to have gotten the better of their neighboring southern football club in joint practice, but the Titans won the day during the official game, 23-20. The Falcons decided to once again withhold their entire lineup on offense as well as many defensive veteran starters.
The battle for final roster spots and potential practice squad places raged on. Here are some winners and losers from the second preseason game in 2025.
Natrone Brooks
If you want a training camp story of football perseverance, look no further than Natrone Brooks, who’s currently in his third consecutive Falcons training camp since being signed as an undrafted free agent in 2023. He failed to make the 53-man roster heading into the season in each of the past two years, being among the final cuts each time, but has stuck on the practice squad (and was even elevated to the main roster a couple times last season).
Given that Atlanta’s cornerback depth seems more questionable than ever, Brooks seems to have a better chance than ever before of being on the Week 1 roster. He has been working as the primary outside cornerback opposite Lamar Jackson with the second team, after being in the contest for primary nickel CB in the very early days of camp.
Brooks had the play of the game for the Atlanta defense, intercepting Brandon Allen on a late second quarter play and returning it 33 yards to finally spark what was a dead Falcons team up to that point. He added in another pass defensed and was the only player to return any kickoffs.
Brooks’ arrow has been pointing up all camp (he’s also been the only Falcon to intercept Penix thus far in camp), and he’s now had his signature moment of brilliance. I would guess that he’s the top second string outside cornerback on the depth chart as of now.
Nathan Carter
Don’t look now, but the RB3 race is suddenly heating up, and it’s Nathan Carter staking his claim to that spot. The rookie out of Michigan State was the starting running back for Atlanta and he was by far the most effective runner, with Jashaun Corbin and Elijah Dotson each averaging a pitiful 1.2 and 1.0 yards per rush in their attempts.
Carter’s moment of the night came on a 3rd-and-10 early in the third quarter (with owner Arthur Blank on the broadcast), when he was given the handoff out of the shotgun, picked his way through the Titans front seven and into the secondary where the burners were turned on for a 43-yard touchdown run.
It wasn’t just the run itself which is cause for optimism from Carter’s perspective (he also had a 24 yard run wiped out due to a holding), but the fact that he was given six of the eight running back carries during the first half, and a team high nine attempts. He seems to be head and shoulders ahead of all the other running backs not named Bijan Robinson, Tyler Allgeier or Carlos Washington Jr.
Out of all the high profile undrafted free agents the Falcons signed this year, Nathan Carter seems to have the best chance at making the roster heading into the season.
David Sills V
You may be looking at me crazy for including Sills in the list of winners — he had two receptions for 13 receiving yards — but just as important as what we see on the field this time of year is what we see off it.
Specifically, we saw David Sills himself off the field, for the entire game after the first drive, for the second game in a row. That generally bodes really well for a player who’s in contention to make the roster when all of the starters on his side of the ball are also being rested.
The Falcons did the same thing with Casey Washington as well last week, and Washington did not suit up in this game after working exclusively with the first team offense (and lining up as the starter in walkthroughs) in the joint practices. Sills caught both of his passes on that first drive, including one to move the chains on third down, and was subsequently pulled after also registering a team high 90.8 PFF grade in those limited snaps.
The top six roster spots at wide receiver seem locked up at this point — Drake London, Darnell Mooney, Ray Ray McCloud, KhaDarel Hodge, Jamal Agnew and Casey Washington. Last year, the team only carried six receivers. We’ll see if Sills, who has been a standout all camp, has done enough to convince them to carry seven into Week 1. If not, then I imagine he would be the first player to be offered a spot on the practice squad.
Teagan Quitoriano
Yes, again, I know what you’re thinking: “How can Teagan Quitoriano be a winner when he didn’t register anything in the box score?” You would be correct about the former fifth rounder not having a single catch, or really doing anything outside of one play.
That one play is what’s going to solidify his spot on the 53-man roster, however. Specifically, it was what followed immediately after Carter’s 43-yard touchdown run. On the ensuing kickoff, TJ Sheffield returned the ball about 20 yards before Quitoriano not only punched the ball out, but kept hold of it and successfully recovered the fumble, essentially just snatching a football out of another grown man’s arms.
Quitoriano has long been the heavy favorite to win that TE3 spot on the roster behind Kyle Pitts and Charlie Woerner. For players at that part of the roster, the coaching staff is looking at how they can contribute to special teams even more than what they can do on the field on offense/defense, since the vast majority of their contribution will be in the kicking game.
I would argue that Quitoriano did more to make the roster with this singular play than he could have doing just about anything imaginable on offense.
The backup offensive line
This is the second week in a row where we’ve highlighted the offensive line as being a “loser.” The top six offensive lineman for the team were not dressed (all of the starters and Storm Norton, who is the primary swing tackle). In their place, it was another week on the struggle bus for the second stringers on the unit.
Let’s start with the run game, which didn’t have much room to get anything going in the first half. If you take out Nathan Carter’s long touchdown, the team as a whole had 72 rushing yards on 24 attempts, which is a very bad 3.0 yards per carry. In the first half, against some of the Titans’ better players (as opposed to the third stringers we saw in the second half), the Falcons had 12 carries for 29 yards, which a catastrophic 2.4 yards per carry.
There were two plays where lineman looked particularly foolish in pass protection that I want to highlight. The first, a first drive sack where Cedric Gray and Carlos Watkins converged at their rendezvous spot which was Easton Sack for a 7-yard loss. Gray got the headlines for mauling Corbin on the blitz pickup, but pay attention to Watkins (number 96 lined up at left defensive tackle) in particular here.
That’s Kyle Hinton, who would immediately be thrust into a starting role if either Chris Lindstrom or Matthew Bergeron had to miss any time at either guard spot, getting pushed into a backpedal.
The next is rookie Jack Nelson (who is pointed out in the below video on the replay) getting bull rushed into Stick’s lap, resulting on a missed throw where the receiver had one on one coverage.
This isn’t to say that these were the only two poor plays when it came to pass protection, they were just among the most egregious. There were five Titans who had a pass rush win rate of over 20%, as the big men in black in the trenches did not do a good enough job of winning their one on one matchups.
Combine all of this with four first half false starts and a Jack Nelson holding penalty for five total flags, and you have a reminder to pray for the good health of Atlanta’s starting offensive linemen (and Storm Norton) this season.
The pass rush as a whole
After a really strong week against the Lions’ backups, the pass rush for the Falcons was nowhere to be found for the most part in this one, the really good James Pearce pressure on the Brooks interception notwithstanding.
Cam Ward’s stats won’t pop off on the page at you. He only went 2-7 for 42 yards and a passer rating of 52.1 in his three drives (all punts), although he suffered from a Van Jefferson drop on a pass that would have gone a long way. What really stood out to me in watching these drives was just how clean of a pocket Ward seemed to have every time he dropped back. Everything the Falcons threw from the edge (and inside) was neutralized until the second string offensive line came in.
The numbers back that eye test up, as Atlanta finished the night with no sacks, one QB hit and six hurries.
The Titans were without two starting offensive linemen in Kevin Zeitler and Lloyd Cushenberry. Only one of these combined hurries and hits was allowed by one of the starting lineman in this game (JC Latham, who otherwise dominated) while the Tennessee starters played.
When you consider that the Falcons once again deployed guys who will be counted on as contributors along the edge and defensive line, the complete lack of pass rush productivity isn’t at all what you wanted to see.
Lamar Jackson
While Natrone Brooks’ arrow seems to be pointing up, cornerback Lamar Jackson is going in the opposite direction since being named as the primary second string outside cornerback upon the release of the first depth chart.
Jackson was second on defense with 50 total snaps played, and I think there’s a reason why he was kept out there throughout the entire game as someone potentially on the roster bubble.
The former Nebraska Cornhusker was picked on by Titans backup Brandon Allen ,who immediately completed back-to-back passes of 12 and then 10 yards against Jackson, one of which was a 3rd down chain mover. Jackson was responsible for three chain movements on third down at the hands of Allen, one of which busted him on a defensive pass interference.
There’s a heavy mixture of things not going well for Jackson at the moment. Brooks’ strong play of late, combined with a poor performance in this game, plus the very long bomb he got burned on last week against the Lions, and now the signing of new cornerback CJ Henderson means all of a sudden that roster spot seems questionable.
Carlos Washington Jr.
Carlos Washington Jr. did not do anything wrong; in fact he did not even suit up as he is dealing with a hamstring injury. The problem for him is that in his absence, Nathan Carter (see above) has come on strong, and with that great performance in this game Washington is once again in danger of not making this roster.
Washington lost a tight battle for the RB3 role to rookie draft pick Jase McClellan last season and he became the presumed favorite after McClellan was released earlier in the summer. Well, now the Southeastern Louisiana alum has missed both preseason games as well as the joint practices with the Titans.
We’ve seen it happen countless times in this league where a player has the inside track to a position and a spot on the roster, gets shelved for an extended period of time due to injury and watches as that opportunity goes elsewhere.
Last year, the Falcons only carried four running backs into the season because Avery Williams was their designated returner. It would be hard to imagine them carrying more than three RBs this season with wide receiver Jamal Agnew now the returner. Right now it’s between Washington and Carter for that final spot, and the undrafted rookie out of Michigan State seems to have all the momentum.