The Falcons brought in Tua Tagovailoa during the offseason for a couple of reasons: insurance for Michael Penix Jr., who’s coming off the third ACL injury of his career, and legitimate competition.

Tua has proven that when healthy, he can win football games in the NFL and play at a high level. He was always going to be given a chance to win the starting job with his performance in practice and presumably in games as well, whether that meant the preseason or regular season.

However, Ian Rapoport reported something yesterday I’ve been saying for weeks: this really isn’t much of a competition at all until Penix is fully cleared. And according to Penix himself, that might not be for several more weeks. That would mean he essentially misses all of training camp and the preseason — and if that’s the case, there’s really no chance he’s the Falcons’ starting quarterback heading into their Week 1 matchup against the Steelers.

“Atlanta is a weird battle, because it really isn’t a battle,” Rapoport said on NFL Network. “You have Michael Penix Jr., the former first-rounder recovering from a torn ACL, he has not been fully cleared and he has not been in team reps. He’s throwing, you can see him do the work, but he is not in team drills and he’s really not fully practicing. This is not a competition until he is fully practicing. If he doesn’t fully practice until let’s say five weeks from now, how is he going to be the starter Week 1? It doesn’t make any sense.

“So my sense, Tua’s the Week 1 starter. He’ll go out there and play. Continues to play well, then he’ll be the guy until he’s not. At some point as an organization you’d like to see Michael Penix Jr. play. You’d like to see if he is in fact the franchise guy — injury concerns notwithstanding. So my sense is both will end up playing, but it’s hard to view it as a battle when Tua is the only one fully participating in practice.”

I’ve always felt it was going to be an extremely uphill battle for Penix to be under center to begin the season. Not only is he coming off yet another significant injury, but his competition has proven to be the better starting quarterback throughout his career. Kevin Stefanski has named accuracy the most important trait for a quarterback, reiterating it several times throughout the offseason — and few guys have been more accurate than Tagovailoa, while Penix has a sub-60% completion rate for his career.

There are a couple of things working in favor of Penix seeing the field this season, though. Most notably, it’s not as if Tua doesn’t have injury concerns of his own. In six seasons, he’s played a full slate of games just once. Additionally, the Falcons would probably like to see what Penix can provide when he’s 100%, if only to determine whether he’s the guy moving forward. When Tua starts to struggle at any point during the season, it won’t be difficult to make the switch to the quarterback still on his rookie contract.

Both are going to see the field this season, and in a perfect world, Penix takes the job and runs with it. However, expecting that to happen in Week 1 just doesn’t seem realistic at this point.

—

(Photo by John Byrum/Icon Sportswire)