The Morning TiltTuesday, October 13, 2026

One exhibition won by three, a National League series tilting away from the club that ended Atlanta's season, and a Finals venue nobody has named. Here is your Tuesday.

Falcons

The imaging happened. Nobody has said what it showed.

Michael Penix Jr. had X-rays after Sunday night's overtime defeat and an MRI was expected Monday. Kevin Stefanski declined to characterize either at his Monday news conference and said he should know more on Wednesday. In the meantime, three separate pieces of encouragement: Adam Schefter reported the injury is not considered serious, Penix said himself it will not be a long-term thing, and The Athletic reported optimism in the building that he plays Sunday.

All three are good news. None of them is a clearance. The distance between optimism and clearance is the only Falcons story this week, and it is a distance the club can hold open until Wednesday without telling anybody anything.

Tua Tagovailoa is the other name on that depth chart. Chicago are 3-2 and at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday at one o'clock. Atlanta are 2-3.

Hawks

Four exhibitions, three wins, and the defeat was the first one of them — Memphis by nine at State Farm Arena on October 5. The three since have come by seven, by two and by three. That is either a team learning how to finish or a team that keeps letting the finish get close, and the preseason is not going to tell you which. It is not built to.

Jock Landale led the scoring on Monday night and Asa Newell took down ten rebounds, which tells you the shape of the evening as well as the result does: Oklahoma City sat people, and Atlanta spent the night looking at its bench.

Dallas on Friday at eight is the last of it. Then Orlando on Wednesday the 21st, which counts. The home opener is Houston on the 24th — and that date is carrying more weight this year than a home opener usually does. More on that below.

Braves

Milwaukee lead the series 2-0 after taking Game 2 by three at American Family Field on Monday, which means the club that ended Atlanta's season on October 7 is now two defeats from the end of its own. Game 3 is Wednesday at eight in Los Angeles. In the American League, Cleveland lead their series 1-0 over Tampa Bay.

Atlanta's interest here is a calendar rather than a rooting one. Every offseason deadline the Braves have keys off a World Series that has not been played, which is why there is still not a single date worth writing down.

What has started is the churn. Atlanta designated Luke Williams for assignment on October 9 and selected Danny Young's contract from Gwinnett the same afternoon. Two moves, four days old, and the first honest sign that the forty-man roster is being taken apart and put back together.

Atlanta United

Fourteenth against fifteenth at Stade Saputo tomorrow night, seven thirty. Atlanta carry twenty-seven points from twenty-eight matches. CF Montreal have twenty-four from the same twenty-eight.

The arithmetic is the only honest way to write this section, so here it is. The last qualifying place is a points total that two clubs are standing on together. Atlanta are nine short of it. Eighteen points are still available across six matches. Four clubs sit in between. That is the entire picture, and the table has not drawn a conclusion from it yet, so neither will this brief.

Inter Miami at home on Saturday evening after that.

One more thing.

The Dream play their first Finals game since 2013 on Saturday afternoon at Chase Center. The building for their three home games — the 22nd, the 24th and the 29th — has still not been named by anybody actually in a position to name it.

Two of those three nights belong to the Hawks. The third belongs to a concert. And on October 6, the Dream signed a multi-year agreement to play every home game at State Farm Arena beginning next season. The three nights they need this season are the three they cannot have. Simone has the piece, and she has been on the tenancy question since June; what is new this week is that the public record got vaguer rather than clearer. Dex has the other half: the national verdict arrived seven and a half hours before the only newsroom with sourcing on it said anything had been settled.

One further unresolved thing, since most of the country's Finals previews are built on top of it. Allisha Gray has not played since the first quarter of October 4. There is no official Dream injury report for Game 1. And Golden State won all three regular-season meetings with Atlanta while Gray was available to play in them. Whatever her return is worth to this series, it is not the whole series.