You know the Unicorn. You don’t know Falcons’ Kyle Pitts.

FLOWERY BRANCH — It’s inked on his left forearm, the small hand rolling a white die toward a pair of playing cards, one labeled “K,” the other “P,” and “KEEP PUSHING” tattooed in bold, black letters.

Kyle Pitts sees it every time he looks down. The artwork. The lettering. The meaning. The reminder.

“You’re always betting on yourself,” Pitts told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “In every circumstance, in terms of anybody talking negatively or speaking positive, I’m always going to bet on myself, in any circumstance, against anybody.”

Since high school, when he grew two inches every year, when he spent summers driving up and down the East Coast with his dad, Kelly, and routinely flourished against higher-rated players, when he picked up Micah Parsons and slammed him to the turf in the state championship game, everybody bet on the Unicorn.

And for good reason.

Pitts carries an uncommon presence: a 6-foot-6, 250-pound action figure with a 6-foot-11 wingspan and a 4.44 40-yard dash in his back pocket.

U-ni-corn: a mythical creature; a person or thing that is rare and highly valued.

But Kyle Pitts is more than the Unicorn. “That’s for my job,” he says. Somewhere along the way — maybe it was the Under Armour All-America honors as a high school senior, or the unanimous All-America nod at Florida, or becoming the highest-drafted tight end in NFL history — the world forgot about KP, or Peezy.

He’s a self-proclaimed “smooth cat,” the son of an Amtrak-working father and a nurse mother, a cologne-wearing, blues-listening, actively-aspiring All-Pro dad. And he’s still only 25 years old.

It’s the dichotomy of life, but Kyle Pitts never let the player change the man. He rarely reads your comments — the ones saying he doesn’t care or doesn’t try — and when they cross his feed under social media posts, he’ll delete them.

Rat poison. People are with you when you’re good and attack when you’re bad. Pitts learned it years ago from a Nick Saban speech, and he’s lived it ever since.

“I feel like I do everything right,” Pitts said. “I do right by people. I’m about my business. I wouldn’t say I have a negative connotation on my name, but if there is something, I would rather clean it up.”

There’s nothing bad — only misconceptions. Loud, inaccurate misconceptions. And he doesn’t need to clean those up. Those who’ve been around him already have.

The hourglass

The first of too many to count tattoos Pitts ever got came in his first summer at the University of Florida: an hourglass with a football at the bottom. He was only 17 years old, but already a few years into deciding there was no Plan B.

“Football will run out,” Pitts said, “but it’s up to you to squeeze it and enjoy it and put everything forth before all the sand is at the bottom.”

Pitts, to a degree, was always destined for this. He gets his size from his dad and his speed from his mom, who pushed Kyle and his sister, Tenae, into running track. As a youngster in flag football, he was bigger and better than everybody else his age.

There’s a video somewhere deep in Greg Garrett’s camera roll of Pitts at 13 years old, pushing more than 400 pounds on a sled, and Garrett, a renowned trainer in the Philadelphia area, screaming, “He’s going to be playing on Sundays!” in the background.

There were, however, a few lowlights. He was “getting my butt kicked” as a sophomore at Abington Senior High School, playing quarterback and linebacker while his coach told him tight end wasn’t his future. He thought his endpoint was near.

But the light bulb clicked entering his junior year after transferring to Archbishop Wood. He never missed workouts at the Catholic school located some 30 miles north of Philadelphia. He’d stay after practice and get additional work with younger players. His dad would be waiting in the parking lot while he kept running routes.

“He outworked everybody,” then-Archbishop Wood coach Steve Devlin told the AJC. “He was driven by that. His personality wasn’t that he was better than anybody else. He bought into the team aspect, and he bought into doing the little things to make himself great. His work ethic was something to see at that young of an age, for sure.”

Pitts spent his free time training with Garrett, who also worked out NFL players Sharrif Floyd, Will Fuller and a handful of others. Pitts saw the standard. He always played up an age group, and training with older athletes forced Pitts to match their level.

Garrett prides his gym on being old school. No pampering. No egos. No hand-holding. Only hard work. His motto: Man up or go home.

Pitts matured in a hurry.

“I’m like, ‘I don’t want to be the weak one in the group, and I want to be able to hang with these guys,’” Pitts said. “It was just something in me, like, ‘OK, I’m going to match it. I’m going to find a way to do it.’ I had that competitive spirit of, ‘OK, I may not be as strong, but I know I can hang, where we ain’t taking too many weights off the bar.’”

Kyle still remembers the days he’d join Kelly at Amtrak, filling his iPod with newly downloaded music — the same old-school R&B, hip hop and jazz as his dad — and listening on the way to the bodega. Walking the streets of New York City and venturing around Times Square were common parts of Pitts’ childhood.

So were long nights thereafter.

When they returned home, Kyle and Kelly would go to the field and work. Kyle didn’t always understand the depths of his father’s grind, but with perspective and a newly acquired strength, he looks back and sees the sacrifices Kelly often made. His mom, Theresa, held down their house. Both Kelly and Theresa still have the same jobs they did when Kyle was in high school.

The Pitts family is blue-collar. Kyle had no choice but to continue the lineage.

“Everybody just worked,” Kyle said. “And it wasn’t no complaining or moaning about anything being hard. It just got done.”

The crown

The most recent tattoo in Pitts’ collection is a crown with the name of his son, Kyle Pitts Jr., on the back. Pitts Sr. became a father in 2023, and he’s fallen in love with watching Jr. grow up, get taller, interact with other kids and start taking an interest in some of the same things that he did.

Ask around about Sr., and the general consensus is he hasn’t let stardom change his fabric. Parenthood, however, is a different story. A new wave of selflessness hit him instantly.

“When you have a child and they arrive on this earth, you see this is no longer about me,” Pitts said. “I’m trying to provide and serve to be the best human that this stranger is trying to learn to be. To be able to, each day, have a steady grind, knowing I’m not doing this for myself anymore — I want, when my kids come to the game, they see Daddy scoring, Daddy playing his heart out every week and, even better, coming home to be the best dad.”

Kelly enjoys watching his son go through the same things he did 20-plus years ago and, with a chuckle, said he feels Kyle is “doing pretty good” with parenting.

“You have no choice but to change the way you move all the way around, because now you have somebody that’s dependent on you,” Kelly told the AJC. “They’re yours. It’s not like a size-13 Gucci sneaker that you order, (and) you send them back. It’s not that simple. Now, you’ve got to hold on to these kids.

“He’s coming along.”

There’s no textbook to parenting, but Kyle’s upbringing gave him the blueprint. His parents hounded him about the mundane, be it taking out the trash or doing his homework. Kelly thought there were times Kyle was hard-headed. He looks back now and realizes his son processed it.

So does Falcons tight ends coach Kevin Koger.

On Monday, during a meeting to begin the Falcons’ Week 1 preparation, Pitts’ upbringing became a topic of discussion with Koger. Pitts’ parents held him to a standard, and if he didn’t uphold it, he heard about it. Those lessons still permeate how he conducts himself.

“I can’t remember the topic, but I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s probably why when you were growing up, your dad was hard on you, and he didn’t let you stray off the path,’” Koger told the AJC. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’”

Pitts has spent much of the past decade in the spotlight on the field and out of it off the field. In high school, he’d go to pool parties and hang out at teammates’ houses. When he walks through Jimmy Mackey’s gym in the Bahamas, he greets everybody — including the islanders.

That’s the craziest thing Mackey’s seen Pitts do in the gym. Not moving weights, but normal, genuine interest in conversation from a player of Pitts’ stature. He’s “one of one” in that regard, said Mackey, who’s trained a wealth of NFL players and connected with Pitts through former Falcons great Julio Jones.

“Listen,” Mackey says, “one of the humblest guys you can meet. Down to earth. I’ve been around a lot of big guys, a lot of Hall of Fame guys. Everybody has different personalities, but Kyle came off as a very behind-the-scenes guy. Like, you don’t know much. But once you start talking to him, it’s like he opens up.”

Pitts’ colleagues attribute his humility to his parents. Pitts, specifically, gives credit to his mom. The Falcons made Pitts a multimillionaire as a 20-year-old in 2021, and the two sides agreed on a three-year, $54 million contract extension in June to keep Pitts in Atlanta.

After his All-Pro honor last season, Kyle Pitts signed a three-year extension to stay with the Falcons. (Miguel Martinez/AJC)

Jawaan Taylor saw Pitts before any of that. The Falcons’ starting right tackle held the same role in 2018 at Florida when Pitts first stepped on campus. Now reunited in Atlanta, Taylor said Pitts is still the same “great dude, great teammate, great locker room guy” that he was as a freshman.

To Pitts, money has only changed what he can buy — food, vacations, clothes. It hasn’t changed what he cares about: football.

“At the end of the day, you got to work, because money does go away and that shouldn’t be the root of your grind,” Pitts said. “It’s more so just knowing that within you, this is what I love to do. So, to be able to get paid for what I love to do is the most important thing.”

The dream

Days before the Falcons drafted him No. 4 overall, Pitts had the NFL logo tattooed on his chest. “It’s like a dream,” he said, and he works every day trying to keep dreaming.

That’s where the disconnect strikes, where people scoff, where they look at his up-and-down career production, stretches of incredible peaks and frustrating, if confusing, valleys, and question how much he cares.

And this is where Koger takes a deep breath, or laughs — or does both. And then, for several minutes, he tells why you’re wrong.

Koger has text threads between him and Pitts from 11 p.m. on game weeks, going through plays because Pitts wants to make sure he understands everything before he goes to bed. They often FaceTime on weekends so Pitts can ask any final questions before game day. They share conversations in the locker room so Koger can make sure Pitts is thinking the right way.

On any given day during the season, Pitts and Koger don’t go very long without talking. They’ve formed a tight bond. Koger spends more time around Pitts than most will in a calendar year.

Koger acknowledged he heard the early outside noise about Pitts’ effort, and oftentimes, effort is lumped into being a care issue. Now entering their third season together, Koger has a strong verdict on any chatter — be it from fans, analysts or anyone in between — about Pitts’ commitment.

“When people say they don’t know how much he cares about football, they just don’t know who Kyle is as a person,” Koger said. “I think he’s done a really good job of silencing critics. There’s always going to be critics when you’re the man in the arena. People are always going to have things to say, so that’s just a part of it.

Some critics have questioned his work ethic, but Kyle Pitts brushes aside the outside noise, focusing on team expectations. (Miguel Martinez/AJC)

Part of it, Garrett thinks, is the Philadelphia roots flowing within Pitts. Philly natives aren’t about flash, flamboyance or talk. They’re laid back, even-keeled and driven by the work. Sometimes, Garrett said, that gets misinterpreted.

“You’ve got to realize people don’t understand Philadelphia players,” Garrett said. “We don’t do a whole lot of talking; we just go to work. It’s kind of read wrong. Like, we’re going to show you. We’re going to put our foot all the way on your throat and keep crushing it. The sledgehammer to an ant — that’s overkill. That’s us. We just want to completely destroy you. And we know talk ain’t going to get that done.”

Pitts said it’s usually hard for Philadelphia high school players to make it to big colleges outside the state, something his father also noted. Maybe it’s the feelings of being overlooked, or perhaps it’s just the region, but Pitts feels there’s a certain culture bred within those Philly streets.

It’s a head-down, grind-centric mentality. So, Garrett says, questions about work ethic and care? Laughable.

“If Kyle Pitts is such this and that, why do you keep reading (about) all these accolades and all this stuff that he’s doing?” Garrett said. “If he’s such that, then how did he make NFL history? He’s the first tight end to ever be drafted that high. Like, it doesn’t make sense to me.

“Go back to high school. You can’t find one bad report about him.”

Or, go back to college.

Tim Brewster spent five years coaching in the NFL, a stint that included helping tight end Antonio Gates jump-start a Hall of Fame career. He wasn’t sure he’d ever see a similar talent, but he always dreamed of the chance.

Brewster already had the early stages of his retirement set, but the allure of Pitts, long arms, elite speed, immense pedigree and all, was enough to leave it behind — and prompt phone calls from several of his NFL friends.

“I’m listening to what they’re telling me about Kyle Pitts, and they wanted Kyle Pitts to be a tougher, more competitive guy in the run game,” Brewster told the AJC. “And I said, ‘Kyle, this is what we’ve got to do.’ And he bought into it.”

Brewster coached Pitts hard. Harder than he’d ever been coached before. Brewster knew Pitts had the chance to be a Gates-level player and was already an elite pass-catcher. His blocking lagged behind. After a COVID summer spent doing Zoom call after Zoom call, Pitts grew and developed, and he embraced blocking.

Nowadays, take a walk outside The Swamp, and you’ll see the brick with Pitts’ name on it, commemorating his first-team All-America campaign in his lone season with Brewster. Pitts caught four touchdowns in the season opener; he uprooted a 290-pound defensive lineman from Georgia another week and, with help from Brewster, improved enough as a blocker to become a trailblazing draft prospect.

“He’s a thoroughbred racehorse,” Brewster said, “who’s going to compete.”

Such pedigree is, to a degree, why Pitts’ critics exist. His 1,026 receiving yards in 2021 were the second-most by a rookie tight end in league history, a feat that, coupled with his high draft position, put him on a legendary trajectory.

A torn MCL and PCL in November 2022 served as a reminder of football’s delicacy. It forced humility and sent Pitts down a challenging — as much mentally as physically — road to recovery. He returned in ’23, but he was still trying to gain strength in his knee throughout the year.

There were midseason quarterback changes in 2022, ’23 and ’24, then injury-related quarterback substitutions in 2025.

All told, Pitts is still fourth among tight ends in receiving yards (3,579) and eighth in catches (284) since being drafted in 2021. He earned All-Pro honors last season for the first time, garnering second-team recognition.

Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts has been highly productive on the field since being drafted fourth overall in 2021. (Rick Scuteri/AP)

“I think there’s people that talk about him being a bust, about him not being the guy that they thought he was,” Brewster said. “Well, guess what? He’s everything that he’s supposed to be, and he’s continuing to grow and get better.”

Still, critics come. Whether it’s right or wrong, Koger pins it on lofty expectations stemming from his draft positioning. So, is Pitts misunderstood? Perhaps — or perhaps that’s merely confused with grandiose expectations and a bar that’s only just below perfection.

The Falcons preach to Pitts the necessity to delineate between external expectations of his performance and his personal understanding of what success looks like within the framework of the Falcons’ offense. They’re dramatically different, and internal success has no bearing on what the outside world perceives.

There’s also this: nobody expects, or demands, more from Kyle Pitts than Kyle Pitts himself.

“We all have our oppressors and our stressors in life, but the pressure he puts on himself far outweighs any outside expectations that people have for him,” Koger said. “A lot of it just comes internally from him versus the outside world’s perspective on what they think he should be and what they think he should achieve.”

For as many deep, emotional, trust-based conversations as Pitts and Koger have shared across the past three seasons, none have ever contained talks of external pressure.

Pitts has built a strong online brand with more than 270,000 followers on Instagram. Doing so, Koger said, comes with the understanding that social media can be evil. Pitts doesn’t subject himself to its dark side during the season, and if it weighs on him, he shows no ill effects.

Koger describes Pitts as “Mr. Personality,” a man of the people, a locker-room connector and a person who loves community — and relationships — above all else. That’s KP, or Peezy, not the Unicorn.

“If people can’t touch you, feel you, talk to you, be exposed (to) you or get anything from you, they’re going to say whatever they want to say,” Garrett said. “They form their own opinion, and that’s that. But I’m here to tell you, he’s none of that.

“He’s a real good person. If you are in his circle, he’s going to make sure he takes care of you.”

The astronaut

Inked across the middle of his chest is an astronaut, his left arm extended, his hand reaching for the NFL logo. Written beside it — big enough to make it stand out on a fully packed canvas — are two words: Dream Big.

The NFL was the dream, the goal. The tattoo is a reinforcement of a lifelong mission accomplished.

“When I was talking to my tattoo artist, I was telling him this is meaningful because it’s very hard to make it to that level, let alone sustain a career,” Pitts said. “To be playing for this long — because, I mean, the stats show (the average NFL career), it’s just about two years — and to be blessed to make it to Year 6, you never take it for granted.”

Of course Pitts knew the stat off the top of his head. He’s an intellect — smart and measured and highly calculated. Archbishop Wood teachers revered him. He’s an old soul who views modern music as “rambunctious.” He has, as Koger says, a “sophisticated” food palate, and his cologne is so strong Koger smells Pitts before seeing him.

Pitts has long been a numbers guy. One day, he walked into Garrett’s gym and proudly announced he’d been ranked as the top tight end in Philadelphia. Garrett scoffed.

“The city? Well, where are you in the state or the country?” Garrett asked.

“I’m No. 7,” Pitts answered.

“So, what are you excited for? You’ve got six people in front of you,” Garrett said. “What are we talking about right now?”

Pitts progressively climbed the ladder. He was the best tight end in the SEC in 2019, the best in college football in ’20 and the highest-drafted in NFL history in 2021.

In his time at Florida, Kyle Pitts was an All-SEC selection during his junior year, with 43 catches for 770 yards and 12 touchdowns. (John Raoux/AP)

Celebration eventually followed, but only briefly.

Nestled within Pitts is a hunger to be No. 1 — as a father, as a player, as a member of the Falcons.

“I just want to be the best,” Pitts said. “Like, being the No. 1 by the time it’s all said and done and to be able to take your watch off and not have any regrets of, ‘Oh, I could have played another couple years,’ or, ‘I still left anything on the table.’ Because once you’re done with it, you’re done.