Falcons training camp kicks off today

It’s over. This was a lengthy offseason that saw the Falcons poach a Saints executive for their vacant general manager job, add the former Titans offensive coordinator as their new head coach, navigate (temporarily) out of a massive cap mess and sign a bunch of affordable free agents and...oh yeah, trade away the best receiver in team history. It was a mighty eventful offseason, one that was followed by more than a month of absolute crickets from the team, but now we can start packing away the conjecture and waking up from the wait and get into Falcons football properly again.

As I wrote the other day, there’s no guarantee that Falcons football will be rewarding this season, but there will be a lot of new players and new story lines to consider as we move toward it. Chief among the items of note during training camp will be the way the Falcons choose to resolve their position battles—left guard and center are the real battles on offense, but everything outside of defensive tackle and maybe inside linebacker will carry real intrigue in the weeks ahead—but any early understanding we gain into what this offense and defense will look like will be welcome. If they happen to look good during August and that translates into September...well, that’d be pretty great. We’re all tired of losing.

Today won’t be hugely exciting, as it will chiefly be about players reporting with all the accompanying (admittedly fun) photo galleries the team will share. It won’t be long before we’re getting practice reports and the kinds of glowing reports about players that get us overly invested in their outlooks for the coming season. All of this is part of a tradition that’s far better than, say, empty calorie June debates during the slowest part of the entire league calendar, though we survived those just fine.

So welcome training camp warmly. As a reminder, here are the public practices you’ll be able to attend if you haven’t already signed up for any. If you haven’t, don’t forget you have to get tickets online, though all but the Mercedes-Benz Stadium practice are free.

• Saturday, July 31 at 9:30 a.m.
• Sunday, August 1 at 9:30 a.m.
• Tuesday, August 3 at 9:30 a.m.
• Wednesday, August 4 at 9:30 a.m.
• Thursday, August 5 at 9:30 a.m.
• Saturday, August 7 at 2 p.m. at Mercedes-Benz Stadium