{"id":595151,"date":"2026-04-20T07:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/595151\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T07:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:40:11","slug":"1-prospect-each-team-must-avoid-in-2026-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/595151\/","title":{"rendered":"1 Prospect Each Team Must Avoid in 2026 NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Falcons won’t have a first-round pick because they traded it last year in the deal to get back in the first round and take James Pearce. <\/p>\n

The decision to pair Pearce with fellow first-round pick raised eyebrows back then. Not only was trading back into the first round aggressive, but they drafted two sub-250-pound edge-rushers. <\/p>\n

The pairing had a predictable impact on their run defense. The Falcons were 27th in EPA allowed per rush and they might have to find a replacement for Pearce, he faces three felonies<\/a> in relation to a February incident. <\/p>\n

Pearce’s legal situation might put edge-rusher back on the menu of possibilities with the Falcons first pick at No. 48. R Mason Thomas<\/a> should not be in consideration, though. He would pose similar on-field limitations to Pearce. <\/p>\n

Thomas brings some real pass-rush juice, but at 6’2″, 249 pounds, he doesn’t have the length or size to hold up as an edge-setter in the run game. If the Falcons decide to address the edge it needs to be a bigger, more powerful prospect to pair with Walker. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Falcons won’t have a first-round pick because they traded it last year in the deal to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-595151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}