FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. \u2014 The Atlanta Falcons will start their 2026 season on the road in an interconference clash with the reigning AFC North champion Pittsburgh Steelers.<\/p>\n
It’s the start of a new era for both franchises. Longtime Steelers coach Mike Tomlin stepped away from his role this offseason after leading the team to the playoffs in five of the last six seasons. In a break from tradition, Pittsburgh brought in longtime veteran coach Mike McCarthy to take over the top spot. McCarthy will call the plays on offense, and he’s got a first-year defensive coordinator in Patrck Graham running the other side of the ball.<\/p>\n
The Falcons have a new head coach of their own. Two-time coach of the year Kevin Stefanski joined the organization after a six-year stint with the Cleveland Browns. He is quite familiar with the Steelers, having shared a division with them for the last six seasons, but he’ll be leading an entirely different group into this matchup. One familiar face alongside him, however, will be offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. Rees joined Stefanski in Atlanta after taking over playcalling duties in Cleveland midway through the 2025 season. On Defense, the Falcons retained coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, who enters his second season after a promising first year.<\/p>\n
With a fresh start on the horizon for both clubs, here’s how you can catch all the action in the Falcons’ season opener:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. \u2014 The Atlanta Falcons will start their 2026 season on the road in an interconference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[117511,5504,139,73,75,74,65954],"class_list":["post-283108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-atlanta-falcons-at-pittsburgh-steelers-2026-reg-1","tag-how-to-watch","tag-news","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-will-mcfadden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}