In less than one season with the Atlanta Falcons, Raheem Morris is enjoying many advantages his predecessor, Arthur Smith, never had. Chiefly among them: not having to suffocate his tenure under some kind of albatross at the quarterback position.
The dead-money Falcons post-Matt Ryan drafted a fantasy football team comprising Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson that was exciting on paper but ultimately nonfunctional with a combination of Marcus Mariota and Desmond Ridder under center. So, the next move was to hurl so much cash and draft capital at the quarterback position once Smith was fired that it would mask the fact Atlanta tried to build itself from the outside in.
Benching Kirk Cousins on Tuesday in a stunning-but-not-really maneuver for rookie Michael Penix Jr. gets us one step closer to the curious heart of this situation: We’re about to find out what, exactly, general manager Terry Fontenot has built here and whether a talented quarterback with a big arm can save it.
Cousins has clearly not been healthy. We’ve seen him multiple times over the past few weeks struggling to piece together the footwork for different running plays. He’s, at times in the backfield, chucking the ball toward Robinson—a play that still works, by the way—when the footwork of a typical Rams-inspired running play should be far more symphonic and harmonious within a network of presnap motion help. Everything about the offense has looked laborious, and while many of the recent interceptions that have built the case against Cousins were not his fault (we get deeper into that here) Cousins has become the convenient scapegoat for a team that was a horrid roughing the passer call away from getting upended by Ridder himself, now quarterbacking the lowly Las Vegas Raiders.
Whether Atlanta decided not to retrofit its offense for Cousins, Cousins wasn’t comfortable doing so, he was masking the reaggravation of some issue related to last season’s Achilles tear, he simply got whacked with the rigors of old age like a winter cold or some combination of the above, the organization corralled around a familiar idea that is becoming less and less believable the further we get into it: That, yes, there’s a good team in here somewhere—a team capable of winning the division—if only the right person could reach in there and find it.
Atlanta has a few things working in its favor. The decision to start Penix now is wise in terms of runway. Penix will face the New York Giants, one of the worst teams in the NFL, followed by a Washington Commanders team that has a winning record but nearly lost two games to the Giants and almost fell to Spencer Rattler and the New Orleans Saints on Sunday. Then, Atlanta finishes the season against the Carolina Panthers.
Because the team’s playoff odds are already a pretty serious improbability—the Falcons have about a three in 10 chance of making it according to most models—he won’t wear the emotional burden of squandering this season. And, if Penix somehow wins two games the Falcons are supposed to, he’d help the organization shuffle into an offseason with a winning record for the first time since—my goodness—2017.
Another bonus? The dead money cost of Cousins getting traded is negated by the fact that Penix is on a rookie contract for the foreseeable future. The transition—if one could call it that—will be made less awkward given the fact that Cousins will again, miraculously, emerge as a salve for some quarterback-desperate team this offseason. The Giants, Raiders and Tennessee Titans would all stumble over themselves for the privilege of having Cousins ambling around their backfield in 2025. Cousins, too, has long been championed by the Shanahan-McVay cabal.
Of course, it’s only a matter of time before the back-patting for Atlanta’s self-protective measures give way to the need for consistent, capable play out of this offense (not to mention the far more glaring need for a string of bang-up drafts that could shore up a defense in desperate need of pass-rush help and consistency in the secondary).
Penix now takes the stage with the ability to wipe out mediocrity or underline the processes that led Atlanta to this purgatory in the first place. Is that fair for a rookie making his first start amid an unusually chaotic circumstance? No. But, it’s become clear the Falcons are out of fingers to point elsewhere. There’s no other choice.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Playing Michael Penix Jr. Will Give the Falcons Clarity On Their Core.