URGENT: Will Avieon Terrell BENCH Mike Hughes and END Atlanta Falcons Cornerback Revolving Door?

This is the Locked On Podcast Network, celebrating 10 years of your team every day. Is Avion Terrell ready to stop the revolving door at Outside Corner, or are the Falcons stuck with another year of Mike Hughes? You are Locked On Falcons, your daily Atlanta Falcons podcast.

Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Locked On Falcons Podcast. I am your humble host, Aaron Freeman, a.k.a. Mr. Drew, a.k.a. Sirius Black, a.k.a. Mr. A.k.a. And today's episode is brought to you by Fandle.

Join all the action at Fandle.com to play daily dingers. Make your free pick on who's hitting a homer this MLB season. Now we are continuing our training camp preview position by position. And today we are breaking down the cornerbacks and we, once again,

we'll be talking about special teams and why it's a critical element to who's going to make this roster. And we'll talk about if Mike Ford, the special teams ace is his grip on a roster spot as tight as we think it is. And we'll also talk about the high stakes battle Royale for a single

cornerback roster spot. And who's going to claim it? Will it be the coach's pet? Will it be the upside bet? or will it be the fan favorites? But we'll start today's episode talking about the biggest question at this cornerback position, which is who are going to be the three starters for the Falcons

in week one and at each position? And what exactly is the plan for Avion Terrell as we enter 2026? Because that's going to factor into how the Falcons figure out who their top three corners are going to be and what's the best way to deploy them. And obviously the four guys that are in the mix in that conversation are AJ Terrell, Mike Hughes, Avion Terrell, and Billy Bowman. Now,

we know AJ Terrell is going to be one of the three, and so it's really about this summer is figuring out who the other two and where exactly are they going to play. Now, I expect Avion Terrell to be one of those other two guys, but it does seem like there are other people out there that are less optimistic on that. We had Joe Patrick of 92.9 The Game on the podcast back

in June, kind of pouring cold water on Avion Terrell being a week one starter based off of his observations in practice. I saw a recent poll from The Athletic where Zachariah Branch was voted overwhelmingly as going to be the most impactful rookie, getting three times as many votes as Avion Terrell, which was a surprise to me to see Branch winning that so handedly. And it's based off of

Avion not getting no starting reps in OTAs due to an injury. But I sit here and I go, if he's not one of the team's top three corners by the time we get to September, based off of his abilities and based off of who he's competing with, that's going to be a huge red flag for Ian Cunningham's first draft pick. But part of that is when you look at the other two

options in Billy Bowman and Mike Hughes, it's not great. And it's not because Billy Bowman's a bad player. It's just because he's coming off an Achilles tear. And we know that's an injury that's hard to bounce back the year after you tear it. You can certainly still play football, but you're almost always a diminished version of the player that you were prior to that injury.

We saw that firsthand with Kirk Cousins, and we're kind of expecting the same thing with Billy Bowman. And, you know, I've said it before, I'm kind of over the Mike Hughes experience. It basically ran out of gas last year. Now it wasn't all bad, but NFL teams picked on him a bunch. You looked at all the other corners, not named AJ Terrell on this Falcons roster. And

according to PFF, they were among the most targeted in the league. D Alford, Mike Hughes, Billy Bowman, all among the top 20 corners in the NFL as the most targeted guys on a per snap basis. And then when you factor in my charting of the Falcons defense, Hughes, out of those three guys, was the worst of the bunch, especially when he was in zone. He was the least likely of that trio

to force an incompletion. He was the most prone to giving up an explosive play and the most prone to giving up a touchdown, which was the majority of his explosive plays resulted in touchdowns. Now, to be fair to Mike Hughes, you know, he was facing a higher level of competition as an outside corner compared to D'Alfred and Billy Bowman as slot guys. But that kind of underlines

why we believe here on the podcast that he's kind of reached this ceiling, Mike Hughes, that is. And it is also worth mentioning that he didn't face the best of the best in terms of the number one and number two wide receivers. We've commented many times this offseason

about how many bullets the Falcons dodge with all these suspensions and injuries for various other teams, number one and number two wide receivers last year.

Chris Godwin, Jordan Addison, Terry McLaurin, Brandon Ayuk, Tyreek Hill, Rasheed Shahid, Garrett Wilson, Devontae Adams are just a top of the list of the wide receivers

that did not play against the Atlanta Falcons last year. And so frankly, from that perspective, I feel like it could have been a lot worse for Mike Hughes in this cornerback room

had many of those guys played against the Falcons last year. And so my hope is that the Falcons are not going to get complacent, and thus why we should see Avion Terrell start at outside corner come week one over Mike Hughes.

Now, many people, myself included, do believe that long-term, Avion Terrell's best upside is potentially as a slot corner. But due to that revolving door that the Falcons have had at outside cornerbacks since A.J. Terrell's arrival six years ago,

where the Falcons have basically had a different starting corner most of the time. Now, the last two seasons, it has been Mike Hughes, and it's potentially going to be a third year heading into 2026. But my stance is we got to stop the revolving door.

And so I want to see if Avion Terrell can stop that revolving door. And if he can't, then no worries.