INDIANAPOLIS — The Falcons are nearing decision day with starting linebacker Kaden Elliss, and they’re considering more than defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s strong pitch.
Elliss, the Falcons’ leading tackler last season and a core piece of their defensive fabric over the past three seasons, is set to enter unrestricted free agency when the new NFL business year begins March 11.
Falcons general manager Ian Cunningham, asked Tuesday at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis whether he wants Elliss back with the organization next season, offered a vague assessment.
“He’s a guy that we’re obviously evaluating and thinking there’s a lot of linebackers in this market,” Cunningham said. “And I feel like we’ve got to really look at our (salary) cap situation and our roster moving forward.”
Cunningham declined to discuss the specifics, be it depth or length, of his conversations with Elliss and his representation.
“I feel like for Kaden, he’s a free agent. And yeah, we’ll see how that goes moving forward,” Cunningham said.
Just under two weeks earlier, Ulbrich, who new Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski retained to lead the team’s defense, gave a strong endorsement to the idea of the Falcons re-signing Elliss.
“I would love Kaden back. I think we all would,” Ulbrich said Feb. 11. “When I think of Kaden, and I know this sounds nuts, but I think of the human being that he is first, the leader he is, what he does behind closed doors. He is one of the most amazing human beings I’ve been around from a character standpoint.
“His influence on this group, not just from a football-process standpoint, but to the way they parent their kids, the way they care for themselves as a man, all that in between, he’s amazing.”
Elliss, a 2019 seventh-round pick of the Saints who didn’t play significant defensive snaps until his fourth professional season, has developed into one of the NFL’s more versatile — and reliable — defenders.
The 30-year-old led the Falcons in tackles each of the past two seasons, and since signing a three-year, $21.5 million contract in 2023, he’s started all 41 games in the middle of the team’s defense. He played all but one of the Falcons’ 1,104 snaps on defense in 2025.
Elliss finished this past season with 107 tackles, 10 tackles for loss and three-and-a-half sacks while adding 10 quarterback hits, fourth most on the team. He’s a potent off-ball linebacker who thrives as a blitzer, and his versatility proved invaluable for Ulbrich’s first defense in Atlanta.
“The player that he is gave us this really unique flexibility,” Ulbrich said. “I mean, to think a guy could play world-class line-of-scrimmage play, but at the same time, you could stack him behind the ball, and he could play world-class stack-linebacker play.
“Then, the metal processing he had. I’ve never had a line of scrimmage player run a defense. In a lot of our defenses, he was a line of scrimmage player. It’s a testament to not only his intelligence, but it’s probably a bigger testament to his process and how hard he worked at it.”
Ulbrich aside, Stefanski also retained inside linebackers coach Barrett Ruud, who’s worked alongside Elliss the past two years. Thus, while the Falcons have new leadership, little changes around Elliss if he returns.
But Cunningham and the Falcons are weighing positional value, and linebacker historically has placed low on the totem pole. The Falcons have only two inside linebackers under contract for next season in Divine Deablo, who’s entering the back leg of a two-year, $14 million deal, and JD Bertrand. They’ll need to add depth and starting-caliber players to the position.
Ulbrich believes Elliss, to a degree, solves both.
“I would love him back,” Ulbrich said. “To replace Kaden would take more than one human being.”
Whether the Falcons ultimately feel Elliss is part of the solution is one of Cunningham’s biggest early questions to answer — and he kept his cards close to his vest Tuesday in Indianapolis.
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