Darnell Mooney suffered a shoulder injury, set to miss ‘a few weeks’

The hope is that Mooney’s absence won’t stretch into the regular season.

Darnell Mooney has suffered a shoulder injury and will miss a few weeks, per Friday night reports. That’s not as terrible as we feared, but it’s not great.

Training camp injuries are one of the worst parts of professional football. A chunk or a full season being taken from a player before any live action takes place is a vile feature of the game. The Atlanta Falcons had multiple such cases a year ago, losing 2024 addition Rondale Moore and rookie Bralen Trice for the entire season. Now the team will have to manage another loss, albeit hopefully for a much shorter time.

The news was first reported by WSB-TV’s Zach Klein, who noted a league source told him Mooney was set to miss most of training camp. ESPN’s Marc Raimondi then followed up with the team, confirming that Mooney would miss “a few weeks.”

The speedy, talented wide receiver is fresh off a season where he posted 64 receptions for 992 yards and five touchdowns, and was going to be counted on opposite Drake London as a compelling deep threat for Penix. Thankfully that role is not in jeopardy, but we’re going to be waiting a bit to see more of that promising connection.

The timeline is a bit uncertain. After the injury announcement, and given that we’re in late July, “a few weeks” could mean that Mooney will be good to go for Week 1 or that he’ll be in danger of missing the first couple of games of the season, depending on the severity of the injury and how he heals up. NFL teams are notoriously cagey about injury estimates and the Falcons sometimes especially so, making it only fair to hold your breath until Mooney is back on the field.

We’ll hope that is soon, because there is no “replacing” Darnell Mooney, not even via aggregate. There isn’t anyone else on the team with his skill set, and a player with his talent isn’t waiting in free agency, though the team moved quickly to sign DJ Chark to give them veteran help and/or insurance. What will the scheme look like if he does miss time?

Expect to see a lot more Kyle Pitts, the wide receiver, if that happens. It was noted during the first day of practice that Pitts spent a lot of time with the receivers. Next to Mooney, Pitts is the team’s best vertical option, and both have an affinity for the corner route that Zac Robinson frequently calls in this offense.

Ray-Ray McCloud stepped up big time last year when Moore went down, and he’ll be called upon again if Mooney misses time. McCloud was stretched thin last year and was often put in unfavorable situations in the run game. Robinson will need to find a better solution in year two, and Chark is likely the immediate answer in camp, preseason, and perhaps early in the season.

Those with the most to gain during camp and preseason are KhaDarel Hodge, Nick Nash, Casey Washington, and Chris Blair. WR5/6 on the depth chart was billed as a tight race; this injury (and his contract) all but assures Hodge’s spot on the final 53 and gives him the opportunity to show he can be more than a special teams ace, even if Chark may have an inside track to more significant playing time. The other WRs are all looking for their first real shot of sustained NFL action, and one of them will seize this opportunity to make their case in August. We’ll see which one it is.

This is not the way the Falcons wanted to start training camp, but it is an unfortunate part of the business. As they say, next man up, and the hope is that Mooney will be back before long.