The Tight End Paradox: Can the Falcons Finally Unlock Kyle Pitts in 2026?

The short version: Kyle Pitts has two catches for 20 yards through three games. Two. The most physically gifted tight end of his generation — fresh off an 88-catch, 928-yard, second-team All-Pro season and a three-year, $53 million extension — has been a ghost in an offense that just hung 35 points on the Green Bay Packers. Tonight, under the Monday night lights in New Orleans against the Saints, the Falcons get their next chance to solve the paradox: how does a team with this much talent at tight end get this little from it?

Start with the numbers, because they are almost hard to believe. Week 1 against Pittsburgh, a 20-13 loss: zero catches, one target — an underthrown ball from Cooper Rush that could have been a big play and instead became a symbol. Week 2 against Carolina, a 34-3 embarrassment: one catch, 15 yards, three targets — and a career-low 37.7 percent snap share, the fewest snaps Pitts had ever played in an NFL game. Week 3 against Green Bay, a 35-14 statement win on Thursday night: one catch, five yards. Six targets. Twenty yards. Three games. For a player the Falcons just paid like a foundational piece — a deal that slots him ahead of Brenton Strange's $16 million and Isaiah Likely's $13.3 million, fifth in tight-end receiving yards since he entered the league in 2021, second among tight ends in receiving yards just last season — the production has been, as one outlet put it, pretty much nonexistent.

The context is real and it matters. Atlanta's quarterback situation to open the season was the most dire in football. Michael Penix Jr. was still working back from a torn ACL. Tua Tagovailoa was dealing with an oblique injury. So the Falcons started third-stringer Cooper Rush — 229 yards, one touchdown, four interceptions across the first two games — and even gave rookie Jack Strand a look in the Carolina loss. The offense scored one touchdown in two games. Nobody eats in that offense, and Pitts was always going to be the hungriest man at an empty table.

But here is the thing the excuses can't cover: Penix came back for Week 3, the offense exploded for 35 against the Packers, and Pitts still vanished. Bijan Robinson and Drake London were the centerpieces. Pitts was, in the cutting phrase making the rounds among Falcons observers, out there for cardio — the Tony Snell of tight ends. Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees admitted the staff wanted to get him more involved. Then Thursday night happened, and nothing changed.

This is the paradox, and The Falcoholic laid it out better than anyone this week. Start with the target funnel: about 24 percent of Atlanta's passes this season have gone to running backs, compared with roughly 17 percent for Kevin Stefanski's Browns teams in Cleveland — and Stefanski's offense is supposed to be the tight end's best friend. Bijan Robinson is an every-down pass-catching weapon in a way Stefanski never had in Cleveland, and his presence is vacuuming up the middle-of-the-field targets that used to belong to tight ends. Then there's the alignment question: Pitts has lined up inline on about 43 percent of his routes this season, per PFF — roughly the same rate as last year's breakout. But when Penix targeted fellow tight end Austin Hooper on the scoring drive before halftime in Green Bay, Hooper was inline both times while Pitts was split out wide. And then there's Drake London, whose skill set overlaps Pitts' as a power-slot receiver to the point where the two rarely seem to thrive in the same game. It is a zero-sum offense, and right now the sum keeps coming up Bijan and Drake.

The frustration is compounded by the memory of what Pitts was supposed to be — and, not long ago, was. The fourth overall pick in 2021 out of Florida, the Mackey Award winner, the generational prospect. Last season he finally put it together: 88 receptions, 928 yards, five touchdowns, career highs across the board, the overall TE2 in PPR scoring. The extension was the franchise saying the breakout was real, that a 25-year-old entering his prime in a Stefanski offense — historically the most tight-end-friendly system in football — was a bet worth making at three years and a team-friendly structure with essentially an option on year three. Through three weeks, that bet looks like the worst contract in the league. Through three weeks, it also looks like three weeks.

Tonight is the fulcrum. Falcons at Saints, Monday Night Football, New Orleans. Penix now has a full week of first-team reps coming off the Green Bay win instead of a short-week crash course. The game script on the road in a dome — likely a shootout, likely pass-heavy late — is the kind that finds tight ends. And the Saints' defense, for all its feistiness, has been vulnerable over the middle all season. If there was ever a week for Rees to put his money where his mouth is — to move Pitts around like Brock Bowers, to manufacture a red-zone touch, to simply throw him the ball more than twice — it is this one, on national television, with the division race taking shape.

The honest version: none of this is guaranteed. Usage is a choice, and three weeks of choices say the Falcons don't yet know what to do with a 6-foot-6 mismatch who can't get on the field for half the snaps. But the talent didn't go anywhere, the contract says the franchise still believes, and the quarterback who unlocked him last year is back under center. The paradox has an expiration date. Tonight in New Orleans would be a fine time to solve it.

Previously's NFL desk will track Pitts' usage all season. For tonight's game-day inactive and injury news, see the Saints-Falcons MNF injury report.