Falcons Starting Quarterback: Tua Starts. Pitts Is Still Priced For A Tie.

Updated September 7, 2026 · prices and projections as of September 7, 2026, 3:18 p.m. Eastern · by Jake Hari

The Quick Answer

Tua Tagovailoa is the Atlanta Falcons' starting quarterback for Week 1 of the NFL season, Sunday, September 13 at Pittsburgh. Head coach Kevin Stefanski announced it Monday morning, September 7: Tagovailoa starts, Cooper Rush is the backup, and Michael Penix Jr. will be inactive. Kalshi's market on the Falcons' Week 1 starter, which this page read at 67 cents on Tagovailoa last Thursday and which a 3:14 a.m. sweep had already run from 73 to 95 before the book refilled at 72 and 73, went from 78 cents to 99 in twelve seconds once the news hit. It sits there as of 3:18 p.m. Eastern on Monday, September 7, a 99-cent bid with nothing offered, while Penix quotes 0 and 2. The question in the URL is answered. The question this page was actually built on is not, because DraftKings set its Week 1 salaries against an "or" and has not touched them: both quarterbacks still cost $4,800, and Kyle Pitts still costs $4,700. Monday's Stokastic Sims run puts a number on what that is worth, and the number the whole page turns on is Pitts's projected ownership.

What Monday Settled

The announcement came from Stefanski, per the Associated Press. "Of course, Mike just getting back to 11-on-11, wanted to make sure we gave him an opportunity in these practices, and we did," he said of Penix. On the choice itself: "But feel strongly about our decision with everything, all the information available to us." Penix tore his ACL in November 2025, was not cleared for full-team work until August 22, and never took a preseason snap. Tagovailoa missed the first week of camp with a tight back, out-repped Penix the rest of the way, and started both preseason games, including the three-drive outing in Miami that went 7-of-8 for 95 yards, opened with an 8-play, 60-yard touchdown drive, and fed Pitts and Jahan Dotson on short throws, though ESPN's account notes he fumbled snaps in both appearances.

Kalshi's contract did the rest at 8:10 a.m. Eastern. The first prints after the news went through at 78 and 79 cents at 8:10:27. A 344-contract buy printed at 95 cents two seconds later. The contract first touched 99 at 8:10:35, a handful of strays filled underneath it, one as low as 78, and from 8:10:39 on every trade has been 99. Penix's contract printed 24 cents at 8:10:29 and was at a penny by 8:12:31. The largest print of Tagovailoa's day came later and went the other way. At 10:50 a.m. someone took the no side at a penny for 8,347 contracts, which on this tape is what selling a 99-cent yes looks like: the last cent now rather than the dollar at settlement. Tagovailoa's contract traded 35,904 contracts on Monday through 3:06 p.m., more than a quarter of its lifetime volume of 127,205, and open interest sits at 60,844. Penix's open interest, 55,925, barely moved, because the holders of his "no" side collect at settlement without selling a 2-cent contract.

The rule this page flagged last week now cuts the other way. Kalshi pays YES on the quarterback the official Week 1 depth chart lists, and closes the market early once that chart is released; a listed starter who gets hurt still resolves YES. Last Thursday that meant a Penix YES would have been a listing, not a snap. On Monday it means the 99-cent contract is a wait for paperwork, and the 2-cent Penix ask is a bet that Atlanta publishes a chart contradicting its own head coach.

The Salary Ladder Never Moved

DraftKings priced the competition as a tie on July 31 and has left it there. On the Week 1 Sunday main slate (12 games, 1 p.m. Eastern kickoff, Falcons at Steelers among them) Tagovailoa and Penix both still cost $4,800; Penix now carries an OUT tag, Rush and Jack Strand sit at the $4,000 minimum, and Aaron Rodgers is $5,300 across the field. The Stokastic Sims project Tagovailoa at 14.69 DraftKings points, 21st among the slate's quarterbacks, at 1.5 percent projected ownership. That is not a quarterback anyone is building around, and the game markets say why. Kalshi has Pittsburgh at 63 cents bid, 64 ask to win the game outright, the spread contract "Pittsburgh wins by over 3.5 points" at 48 and 49, and the total split at the low 40s: over 41.5 at 50 and 52, over 42.5 at 48 and 49. A field-goal underdog in a 42-point game does not produce a tournament quarterback at any salary, and Monday did not change that. The sportsbooks moved Pittsburgh from -3 to -3.5 before the announcement, not after it, as the OddsShopper board on this market traced on Monday.

What Monday did change is the shape of the Falcons' passing game, and the ladder behind the quarterback was built before anyone knew which shape it would be. Tagovailoa's tape against Miami was the quick game: Pitts and Dotson on short throws. The salaries below were set for a coin flip between that offense and Penix's downfield one. Now there is one offense, and a 3.5-point underdog in it should spend the second half throwing.

The Reprice: Falcons Pass-Catchers On The Week 1 Main Slate

Salaries and status tags are from the DraftKings Week 1 Sunday main slate; projections, ownership and optimal rates are the Stokastic Sims run as of Monday, September 7, 3:18 p.m. Eastern. "Optimal" is how often the player lands in the Sims' top lineups; the gap between that column and ownership is the leverage.

The row that rewrote the page is London's. On Thursday this page had him as the Penix play, the receiver whose $6,500 assumed downfield volume. The Sims run with Tagovailoa named has him fourth among all wide receivers on the slate at 17.35 points, behind only Ja'Marr Chase, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Chris Olave, and his 6.3-percentage-point gap between optimal rate and ownership is the largest positive leverage of any receiver in that top 15. The quarterback change did not cost London his volume, because a 3.5-point underdog's WR1 keeps his targets whichever quarterback throws them; it cost him the field's attention. He is priced seventh among wide receivers and projected fourth.

Then there is the Dotson row, which is where the Miami tape and the Sims part ways. The quick-game script that fed Dotson in preseason gives him 3.71 projected points at $3,700; Zaccheaus, at $3,500, projects higher. Neither is a play. The quick game against a real defense runs through the tight end, and Pittsburgh's is the defense to run it against: by FF Today's count, the Steelers allowed 13.6 fantasy points a game to tight ends in 2025 against a league average of 10.7, on 106 catches, 1,121 yards and 11 touchdowns, and Darren Waller, then in Miami, put 7 catches and two scores on Pittsburgh in Week 15 of 2025. That 2025 number is the prior, not the verdict: whether the coverage group that gave it up is the one on the field Sunday is a Wednesday question, and I hold the matchup edge loosely until the first practice report says who is playing. That is the row I wrote this page for.

The Decision Rule

The one I keep coming back to is still Pitts. Last Thursday this page argued that his $4,700 was set for a tie, that the market's two-to-one lean was toward the quarterback whose last live tape was a short-area quarter, and that "the day Atlanta prints Tagovailoa's name, Pitts stops being a tie artifact and becomes an ownership problem." My expectation was that the field would catch up within a day. Seven hours in, it has not started: the 3:18 p.m. Sims run still has Pitts at 4.5 percent projected ownership, and Monday-afternoon ownership on a Sunday slate is the first read, not the verdict. The number to check is Wednesday's, after the injury report. What the Monday run does settle is the shape: Pitts is fifth among tight ends by projection at 11.51 points, fifth by salary at $4,700, with a 6.2 percent optimal rate against that 4.5. For the comparison that matters in a tournament, Juwan Johnson in New Orleans projects 11.49 points, two hundredths less, at $3,700 and 18.6 percent ownership. The field is projected to pay $1,000 less for the same projection at four times the ownership, and it has a reason: the Sims give Johnson the higher boom rate, 17.8 percent to Pitts's 9.6, on nearly identical ceilings of 16.17 and 16.04. What the field is not pricing is the other side of the ball. Johnson's ceiling comes in a Saints offense the whole slate is stacking; Pitts's comes against a defense that gave up 27 percent more tight end production per game than the league average a year ago, with a quarterback whose one live outing this summer ran through him. Brock Bowers, the position's ceiling at $6,900, projects 17.88 at 15.1 percent. Pitts is the tight end priced for a coin flip that was decided on Monday, and the ownership number says the salary ladder is not the only thing that has not moved.

The stack writes itself from those rows. Tagovailoa at $4,800, London at $6,500 and Pitts at $4,700 come to $16,000 for a quarterback and his two first reads, at a combined projected ownership under 17 percent, in a game where Atlanta's most likely script is trailing and throwing. The bring-back is the honest problem: DK Metcalf ($5,400) and Michael Pittman Jr. ($4,900) both carry questionable tags on DraftKings as of Monday, so the Pittsburgh side of the stack waits on Wednesday's first injury report of the season. So does the Falcons side in one respect: Atlanta has not published an injury report yet, and a limited-practice designation on Pitts or London on Wednesday, September 9 would move these numbers before the field does. The risk that does not wait on a report is the quarterback himself, and it is not variance: the Sims give Tagovailoa a 20 percent bust rate, a touch better than the slate's quarterback median. It is the snaps, and the ball. He fumbled snaps in both preseason games, threw 15 interceptions in Miami last season, and Penix being inactive rather than dressed means the in-game fallback is Rush, a $4,000 quarterback the Sims do not project at all. A stack built on Tagovailoa's first reads is a stack built on Tagovailoa finishing the game.

Week 1 ownership, projections and stacks update through the week in the NFL DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub; the Week 1 NFL predictions board prices every Week 1 game the way this page priced Falcons-Steelers, and the NFL DFS quarterback strategy guide covers why a cheap passer in a low-total game is tournament-only.

Build the Falcons stack against the field, not the ladder. The Stokastic NFL Sims run the Week 1 main slate with projections and ownership built in, so a $4,700 tight end at 4.5 percent ownership shows up as what he is: leverage, with a bust rate attached. Code FALCONSQB10 takes 10% off your first week or month.

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The Bottom Line

The Falcons starting quarterback is Tua Tagovailoa, Kalshi's market said so at 99 cents within twelve seconds of Stefanski saying it, and the only thing left to trade on that board is the paperwork. The DFS value of the answer was never at quarterback, and the Monday Sims run says it is still where this page put it last Thursday: at tight end, where Pitts costs $4,700 against a tie that no longer exists and the Sims project him at 4.5 percent ownership, and now at London too, the slate's fourth-best projected receiver at a seventh-best salary and the biggest leverage gap among the top wideouts. The quarterback rung closed on Monday. The salary ladder is still open until Sunday at 1 p.m., and so is the ownership, and the second one is the number to watch after Wednesday's injury report lands.

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