The Falcons! The Broncos! Backups! Deep reserves! It’s all here in Week 1 of preseason.
Here’s everything you need to know about tomorrow night’s game, which is likely to be sloppy football but fun nonetheless, not to mention important given all the roster battles that are going on. Let’s dive in.
Roster battles to monitor
QB3
Cooper Rush will be first up in Friday’s game and is the veteran, so he’ll have a real leg up on this competition. Jack Strand, meanwhile, has been far better than an undrafted free agent quarterback usually is and will have a chance to make his case in a real game.
RB3
New arrival Trey Sermon can push Nate Carter, Tyler Goodson, and to a lesser extent Cash Jones for a role. I think Jones will latch on to a practice squad spot owing to his receiving ability and special teams prowess, so the real competition figures to be Sermon versus Carter versus Goodson. A quality first preseason game could give one of them a major boost, especially Sermon as a new face.
WR5/6
As always, there are many competitors here and not a lot of room on the roster. Chris Blair has been here a long time and is having another fine summer, while rookie UDFA Vinny Anthony is rolling. Antwane Wells Jr., Keelan Marion, Kristian Wilkerson, and Dylan Drummond round out the competition, and as is always the case, one of these guys will get hot in preseason and push for a role.
C2
Corey Levin and James Brockermeyer are duking it out, and this one’s fun because Levin brings a connection to Bill Callahan and long experience in the league and Brockermeyer is an intriguing undrafted free agent with no experience but plenty of talent. Levin promises reliability, but Brockermeyer’s upside makes him a player well worth watching.
ILB2
Maybe the most compelling battle of them all. Christian Harris, Kendal Daniels, and Harold Perkins Jr. are all competing for a starting job next to Divine Deablo, and they’ve all had their turns working as starters in training camp. With Deablo already a little banged up, the pecking order could matter a great deal here, and we’ll be watching all three closely to see how good they look in live game action.
CB2/3
There’s some legitimately interesting subplots here, too. Is Mike Hughes ticketed for #2 duties again, or can Avieon Terrell take that over? Will Billy Bowman Jr. be healthy enough to seize the nickel job, or are Terrell and Darnay Holmes leading the way for that competition? Performance and when we see these players out there on Friday night will give us some early clues.
What’s new with the Broncos?
The Broncos didn’t overhaul their roster after making the playoffs in 2026 with a young quarterback and core and odious headset-wearing orc Sean Payton still roaming the sidelines, but they saw an opportunity to go further in the postseason and took it.
Their big splash was trading for Jaylen Waddle, a hugely underrated receiver who saw his production dip last year when Tua Tagovailoa imploded. It cost them a first and a third—they also swapped fourths with Miami—but he and Courtland Sutton give quarterback Bo Nix an excellent #1 and #2. They otherwise focused on retaining their own talent on both sides of the ball and used limited draft capital—their first pick was in the third round—on the trenches, at tight end, and picking up a bruising runner in Jonah Coleman for a crowded group of backs.
They’re likely to once again be a major contender in the AFC, barring a meltdown from Nix.
What to know about Friday
As always, this is a good opportunity to see how Falcons’ starters stack up against the starters on a really quality football team, and what their depth looks like against equivalent players outside of the roster. Thus far we’ve seen a lot of encouraging things from the defense in camp and some sharp performances from quarterbacks and receivers for the Falcons offense, but will they maintain that against Denver? I look forward to finding out.
The fact that the Falcons will indeed give their starters some run after Arthur Smith largely eschewed that and Raheem Morris completely avoided doing so will be refreshing, even if it’s only likely to be for a small handful of snaps. Otherwise, what we’re looking for is A) the team exiting this game in good health and B) some movement in the various roster battles we’ve been tracking to this point.
I’m particularly excited to see rookies Zachariah Branch and Avieon Terrell in action, and to get a glimpse at how Christian Harris, Kendal Daniels, and Harold Perkins Jr. look at inside linebacker, a position that is fraught with uncertainty with Divine Deablo’s injury history and Kaden Ellis’s departure. We’ll have plenty to talk about over the weekend.