The Atlanta Falcons will hold their first full-team practice of training camp on July 29, and for the first time in months there is no contract cloud hanging over the roster. Kyle Pitts and the club agreed to a three-year, $54 million extension on June 23, a deal first reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter that includes $36 million fully guaranteed and keeps the tight end in Atlanta through the 2028 season.
The structure says as much as the total. Per Schefter, it is the largest three-year contract ever given to a tight end, and its $18 million average ranks third at the position behind San Francisco’s George Kittle at $19.1 million and Arizona’s Trey McBride at $19 million. Atlanta had placed the non-exclusive franchise tag on Pitts on February 24, which bought the front office until July 15 to work out a long-term deal. They did not need the deadline. The agreement came more than three weeks early, and that matters for a franchise that has spent recent seasons letting its biggest decisions drift into the fall.
What changed the calculus was 2025. Pitts caught 88 passes for 928 yards and five touchdowns and earned second-team All-Pro honors, finally producing at the level Atlanta imagined when it drafted him fourth overall in 2021. The tag was a hedge; the season removed the doubt. The team’s own announcement framed the tag year as time for the new leadership to learn who Pitts was, and what they learned convinced them he belongs in the plan beyond 2026.
The measured read: this is a fair price rather than a bargain. Eighteen million a year for a tight end coming off his first All-Pro season is paying for the player he just was, and betting the 2025 version is the real one rather than the outlier in a career that spent three seasons underwater. But the guarantee structure is short enough that the bet is survivable if it misses, and the alternative was a one-year tag standoff dragging into camp with no cost certainty beyond January.
Rookies report a few days ahead of veterans this month, and the first of ten open practices follows on July 29. Atlanta will arrive with its best receiving tight end since Tony Gonzalez under contract and nothing left to negotiate. Closing early is a small thing in July. It tends to be less small in December.
