Green Bay hosts prime time in Week 3 still stinging from a 5-game collapse to end last season, while Atlanta rolls in having closed 2025 on a 4-game heater. Something's got to give under the lights at Lambeau.
Share
Show fees
FRI SEP 25 · 7:15 PM CT
Spread
ML
Total
Falcons
Packers
The headline storyline here is the two quarterbacks. Jordan Love is coming off the best season of his career, a third straight playoff berth, and a 4-year, $220 million extension that made him the face of the franchise. Across the field, Michael Penix Jr. is still working back from a torn ACL suffered last November — at mandatory minicamp in June, coach Kevin Stefanski confirmed Penix hadn't yet been cleared for full 11-on-11 reps, though the plan is for him to get there once training camp opens. Trevor Siemian, who reunited with Stefanski from their Minnesota days, is the emergency plan if Atlanta needs it.
The bigger absence for this specific game is on Green Bay's side. Micah Parsons — acquired from Dallas last summer and signed to a 4-year, $186 million extension before tearing his ACL against Denver in December — is targeting a mid-October return and will open the season on PUP. That means the Packers' best defensive playmaker sits out Week 3. Green Bay also spent the offseason retooling its receiver room after losing both Romeo Doubs (to New England in free agency) and Dontayvion Wicks (traded to Philadelphia), leaning instead on extended vets Christian Watson and Jayden Reed alongside 2025 first-rounder Matthew Golden.
Atlanta didn't sit still either. Bijan Robinson set the franchise's scrimmage-yards record and made first-team All-Pro, and the Falcons locked up Kyle Pitts on a 3-year, $54 million extension — the richest 3-year tight end deal in league history — to go with Drake London's new deal at receiver. Both teams enter the season selling optimism after ugly finishes, and neither has fully proven it fixed what broke down.
Atlanta Falcons
Green Bay Packers
It's worth remembering how differently these two teams closed 2025. Green Bay opened 5-1-1 but lost its final 5 games of the year, including a gutting Wild Card exit to the Bears — their first postseason loss to Chicago since 1941 — to finish 9-7-1. Atlanta, meanwhile, was dead in the water at 4-9 before ripping off 4 straight wins to end the year, missing the playoffs but building real momentum into 2026.
Atlanta Falcons
(0)
Fully healthy — no injuries to report
Green Bay Packers
(0)
Fully healthy — no injuries to report
None of that guarantees anything for a Week 3 Thursday nighter that's still months away, and camp battles can rewrite depth charts before anyone takes the field. But the shape of this one is already clear: a Packers offense retooled around Love and new-look receivers, without their best pass rusher, against a Falcons team riding a hot close to last season and hoping its quarterback is fully back by kickoff at 7:15 PM CT.
