Michael Penix Jr. made his Falcons regular season debut on Sunday against the Seahawks with the game well out of reach.
Atlanta ended up losing 34-14, and Penix relieved Kirk Cousins with 3:29 left to play. In seven snaps, the 8th overall pick handed the ball off six times but did complete his only pass attempt, a 14-yard pass to Casey Washington.
Cousins struggled against Seattle, sparking some Falcons fans to call for Penix. Two thoughts: nearly every facet of the team failed against the Seahawks, and every time Cousins stumbles, fans will call for Penix. It’s mostly just noise. However, as Jessie Bates III noted after the loss, anything can happen in this league.
“I know at some point — knock on wood — it’s just one play,” Bates said of the possibility of an injury. “You never know what can happen in this game. And I’m just making sure that he’s continued to prepare himself like he’s a starter and preparing and learning and seeing the bigger picture. Because right now, it’s hard. I’m sure it’s hard for him to see what the bigger picture is.”
Other than an injury, there is a concrete marker for when the Falcons will make a quarterback change. Raheem Morris told Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, “When do you transition to a new quarterback? When he can’t win.”
This comment came from Fowler’s ‘Which QB could surprisingly be on the offseason market?’ section, which included Kirk Cousins. One other nugget that Fowler added was people don’t expect the Falcons to sit Penix for multiple years.
“When I’ve asked people around the league whether they expect the Falcons to show restraint and sit Michael Penix Jr. for multiple years, the majority responded that they do not,” Fowler wrote.
In my estimation, the driving factors in Atlanta’s decision-making process are how the team finishes the season, how Kirk Cousins performs down the stretch and Michael Penix Jr.’s development. But for now, Kirk Cousins is the guy, and a couple of shaky performances isn’t going to change that.
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