3 Players the Atlanta Falcons hope won’t land in the NFC South

3. Saquon Barkley

If the Tampa Bay Bucs had a running game at all during the 2022 season the division race wouldn’t have been close and perhaps Tom Brady would still be playing football. Carolina on the flip side would have won the division with Barkley or if they had kept Christian McCaffrey and the veteran had stayed healthy.

Barkley is a player that has zero fit for the Falcons considering their depth at the position but certainly not a player they want to see join a rival. Tampa’s cap space seems impossible to fit a star player in but with Barkley, Godwin, and Mike Evans they would simply need a capable quarterback to be a real contender.

Frank Reich has shown what he can accomplish with a capable running game and Saquon would allow Carolina to push ahead of Atlanta as clear division favorites. The good news for the Falcons is the lack of cap space all three teams in their division are currently projected to have. Atlanta’s cap space is far more than all three teams combined with New Orleans and Tampa both currently with negative cap space.