FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — It is apparently the destiny of this Atlanta Falcons football season that even the team’s wins come with dark clouds.
The Falcons spent two first-round draft picks on edge rushers in April in an attempt to remake a struggling pass rush. It worked. Jalon Walker and James Pearce Jr. lead all rookies with five sacks each, and Atlanta is third in the league with 41 sacks as a team.
But the bill is going to be due soon, and the price keeps going up.
Atlanta drafted Walker out of Georgia with the No. 15 pick and then surprised the rest of the league by trading its 2026 first-round pick to the Los Angeles Rams for the No. 26 pick, which it used to take Pearce out of Tennessee. The deal was viewed as risky at best, but the Falcons justified it internally with their belief in Pearce and their belief in themselves. The idea, defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said at the time, was that the team would play so well this season that its 2026 pick would be worse than the 2025 pick it acquired.
Instead, if the season ended today, the Falcons would be sending the No. 9 pick to the Rams, and that pick will get even better for Los Angeles if Atlanta (4-8) can’t stop a slide that has included six losses in its last seven games.
Still, Falcons head coach Raheem Morris believes the deal was worth it eight months later.
“Yeah, we love James Pearce,” Morris said. “He’s done a great job of providing us a lot of relief in our pass rush this year. Being able to get Jalon and double it up and get James, I love those guys.”
Pearce’s quarterback pressure rate (15.3 percent) leads all rookies and ranks 19th among players with more than 200 pass-rush snaps this season. Walker is tied for the rookie lead in forced fumbles (two) and is 10th in third- and fourth-down stops, according to TruMedia.
“It was expected for us,” Morris said. “We talked about these guys being able to provide immediate pass rush for us, and to see these guys go out and provide what we expected in the draft is satisfying.”
Falcons rookie Jalon Walker, the 15th pick in the draft, has five sacks and two forced fumbles this season. (Brett Davis / Imagn Images)
Pearce and Walker have been the catalysts for the remaking of an Atlanta pass rush that had been mostly dormant for the last two decades. The Falcons’ 41 sacks this season are more than they’ve had in all but three of the last 25 seasons. They need eight more to post their highest total since at least 1999, according to TruMedia.
“You never really want to put big sack expectations on rookies,” Morris said. “Sometimes you put unrealistic expectations on some of these young guys. It’s hard to get to the quarterback. It’s a process, but I think they have done a nice job in those roles, and they are getting better and better every single week.”
Pearce and Walker are first and third among rookies in TruMedia’s splash rate, which tracks sacks, pressures, run stuffs and turnovers along with other momentum-turning defensive plays.
“They have gotten better, not every game, but every day,” Ulbrich said. “It has been fun to see.”
Pearce has had a sack in each of the last four games, which is the longest streak in the league by a rookie this year. It doesn’t surprise Ulbrich, who has seen the 22-year-old mature throughout the season. Pearce recently asked for a practice play to be repeated three times to get his technique right, Ulbrich said.
“As a coach, you just hope and pray that when those improvements are happening, they pay off on Sundays, and fortunately they have,” Ulbrich said. “He is not there yet, but he’s making strides for sure.”
Pearce is aware of the high price the Falcons paid to acquire him, but he doesn’t put any extra pressure on himself because of it.
“I always put a lot of pressure on myself to go out there and do my job at the highest level and show people that I am running with the best,” he said. “I am just trying to keep taking those strides. Just focusing on being a pro and doing the right things, working on the mental aspect of the game.”
The 1-2 combo 😤@JalonWlaker x @JamesPearceJr10https://t.co/4yVnQQtuax pic.twitter.com/fCPjPbebbN
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) November 13, 2025
The biggest improvement in Pearce’s game has been his understanding of how to approach his assignment on a snap-to-snap basis, Morris said.
“He’s learned more about the calls … when there has to be a controlled rush, when it has to be power. How do you rush in the red zone versus open grass?” Morris said. “He’s gotten a better grasp every single week. His process has gotten better in practice. His process has gotten better in the meeting rooms, and it’s really shown and become game reality for us.”
Both Walker and Pearce are now more vocal during the team’s walk-throughs than they were in the first half of the season, cornerback A.J. Terrell said.
“They are more dialed in, and they have become more comfortable in the scheme,” Terrell said.
Walker and Pearce have combined for two sack-fumble turnovers this season, taking turns on either end of the play, and have developed a close friendship off the field.
“That’s my guy,” Pearce said, “he keeps me going.”
The players’ relationship started the day after they were drafted, when they flew to Atlanta together on Arthur Blank’s private jet. They refer to themselves as “Thunder and Lightning,” Walker said.
“We trade it out. He’ll be Thunder one day, I’ll be Lightning. Then he’ll be Lightning, and I’ll be Thunder,” Pearce said.
If they continue to develop at the current pace, the Falcons’ draft-day gamble could eventually pay off, even if their initial calculations of its cost were wrong. That, though, will be contingent on not just turning around their fortunes in the final five games this year but also proving in the next three years that they acquired an elite pass-rushing duo.
“At the end of the day,” Pearce said, “it’s about wins and losses.”