Why did the Falcons draft Michael Penix?

This is the burning question of all burning questions after a first round selection that left fans reeling.

It was the stunner of the first round, a pick destined to define the Atlanta Falcons in the coming years, and a big flag to plant for Terry Fontenot and Raheem Morris. The Michael Penix pick at No. 8 wasn’t just an audacious, potentially reckless use of premium draft capital designed to get the Falcons their future quarterback. It was a curveball thrown by a team that’s supposed to be contending in the here and now, one we all expected to take a top defender or maybe a high-end receiver to bolster a roster ready to roll in the NFC South.

Instead, the Falcons went and got Penix. The Washington quarterback is a player I like a lot, but I didn’t really dream that he’d the selection at No. 8 for this team, not with the talent available and the team’s needs. But this is something the Falcons promised us they’d do, add to the quarterback room and choose who they identified as the best player available, and they’ve done so.

Why? That’s the question hovering over the pick and the team’s immediate and long-term future. While we’re not able to give an answer that’s going to satisfy everyone—the Falcons would have to walk through their process and their timeline, something they’re not going to do in any detail—we can go off of what the Falcons have said and done to try to determine the why. Whether that why satisfies anyone or not is, of course, an open question of its own.

You can watch the post-draft pick press conference here, with all the rationale Morris and Fontenot provided, I’ll try to dive in and make some sense of the selection.

They love Penix the player

This should be obvious.

Dan Orlovsky at ESPN suggested the Falcons had Penix as the second-best quarterback in this class, which you can take aim at per your own preferences, but clearly underscores how highly the team thought of him. They like his arm, they like the way he carries himself, and they think he’s a damn good quarterback who can be better in the NFL with time and care.

The team sending a contingent out to Washington to see Penix throw and coming away impressed from the front office down to quarterbacks coach T.J. Yates appeared to seal the deal here, and no matter what anyone tells you, there probably wasn’t some last minute reversal by general manager or owner that landed Penix in Atlanta. The Falcons brass signaled repeatedly in the run-up to the draft that they liked Penix and were considering a quarterback early, but I don’t think any of us took it seriously because…well, because it seemed nuts. Yet here we are.

There are plenty of holes to poke in Penix’s game, especially his not-always-pinpoint accuracy and lack of quality work over the middle of the field, and his age and injury history are twin concerns that will animate discussion around him for years to come. But the Falcons saw all of that and still fell in love with the player, and they notably did so with a brand new coaching staff in town that also would’ve driven the Kirk Cousins pursuit. We can be incredulous and critical—both are fair and just in this moment—and still acknowledge that there’s no ulterior motive here beyond the Falcons simply thinking they found a franchise quarterback for the long haul.

Of course, as many fans pointed out in the aftermath of the pick, the Falcons also had a ton of faith in Desmond Ridder, something that did not exactly pan out for them. My counterpoint would be that Penix is a better quarterback, will have more time to develop, and has a more robust staff to support his development, but it’s not unfair at all to ask if this front office can properly evaluate the position after the Deshaun Watson chase, the Marcus Mariota signing, the Ridder pick and ill-fated starting stint, and the Taylor Heinicke signing. Penix has to be the new exception to the rule, or we’re in trouble.

They want Cousins insurance, and a succession plan

Again, this seems obvious, but rage and the way NFL contracts are reported can both cloud the picture.

I don’t care that Terry Fontenot said out loud that the Falcons are fine with Penix sitting for “four or five years” if Cousins is killing it. If they really believed Penix would not play over the life of his rookie contract, they would not have picked him. No matter how much disdain you have for the team’s current brain trust, I don’t think you can seriously suggest that they would take a guy they thought might leave in free agency without playing a single snap.

No, the Falcons drafted Penix for short-term Cousins insurance and a long-term replacement, with the clock starting to tick at the end of the 2025 season. Cousins has been remarkably durable and tough during his career, with last year’s injury cropping up as the first major one he has dealt with, but I can tell you firsthand that entering your mid-to-late 30s does not improve your chances of avoiding major injuries. Taylor Heinicke is not a stylistic fit for this offense, however much the team may like him, but Penix certainly is more of one. Once he’s up to speed, the Falcons will feel very comfortable with him stepping in if Cousins gets hurt, giving them multiple years of semi-affordable insurance for their big veteran prize.

That’s not to say the Falcons are worried about Cousins’ injury or thinking he will get hurt. It’s just about protecting an investment in an older quarterback, even if you’re doing so with a player with a concerning injury history of his own.

But the Falcons also didn’t draft Penix just to be a well-compensated backup. They’re intent on molding him into a Cousins replacement, a Diet Matthew Stafford, and perhaps a lefty Matt Ryan. What I mean by that is not that he’s going to be the same guy as any of those three players, but that he’ll fit comfortably into the offense that Zac Robinson wants to run as a pocket passer with a good arm who can keep a quality passing game humming. They clearly don’t see Cousins playing out his entire deal, but instead rolling until his age 38 or 39 season and then moving on and handing Penix the keys.

The Falcons have repeatedly referred to the “Green Bay” scenario here, which refers to Jordan Love sitting behind Aaron Rodgers for multiple years before stepping in, and if you go back even further, Rodgers behind Brett Favre. The differences between the Packers and the Falcons today are legion, from how good Green Bay was at the time (pretty damn good) to Love himself (a younger prospect), but the Falcons have determined they have a good chance of emulating the success of the Packers project with the right quarterback.

Whether it’s in two years with Cousins declining and the Falcons having to eat dead money or in three years with Cousins maintaining a high level of play but most of his money paid out, the Falcons will move on and start Penix during his rookie deal. They took him with that in mind, and Fontenot and Morris can talk all day about being comfortable sitting four or five years without us needing to believe that’s a serious proposition.

They don’t think they’ll get another crack at a quarterback in the next two-plus years

The Falcons have talked a lot about being a contender every year and not having the luxury of a top ten pick, something that has not exactly come together as they’ve hoped. But they’re still talking like that, and now with Cousins in the building, they really think they’re going to be atop the NFC South for the next couple of seasons.

Morris was notably confident in last night’s press conference, and about this in particular. The Falcons think they’re a playoff team with Cousins, and they have seen the trend lines with drafting quarterbacks in recent years, where the best ones tend to go quickly and trades to the top cost an absolute arm and a leg even if you’re not all that far out of the top spots. If you think you’ll be picking in the 20s and you feel strongly that you have Cousins for only 2-3 years before you’ll need your next franchise guy, the thinking seems to be, why not get that guy right now?

This will of course look really dumb if the Falcons stink either of the next two years, pick in the top ten again, and would have a crack at another really good quarterback prospect they like. Their outsized confidence that they won’t be in that situation helps explain why they felt it was the right player, right time with Penix, but naturally we won’t know until they actually play whether it reflects reality.

All of these things help to explain the why from Atlanta’s perspective. But is this going to work?

What’s the risk here?

The risk is simply that Penix is not a terrific quarterback. If he’s not a good starter, at the absolute minimum, it’s not clear to me that Terry Fontenot and Raheem Morris can survive that. It would be apocalyptic for the Falcons if he was lousy.

Think about it this way: If Cousins is great and the Falcons thrive, Fontenot and Morris are in good shape. The instant they have to go to Penix, in 2026 or 2027, they have to put their post-Cousins succession plan in order, because their own expectation is that they will not be in a position to select a top quarterback in either of those seasons. If Penix falters, the Falcons could very well falter with him, and unless the Falcons were wildly successful in the Cousins years, that’s probably the end of the line for this regime. That in turn would leave a new group with the unenviable task of getting another quarterback and starting over, leaving us in a familiar state of sadness. We’ll be seeing Penix listed as one of the worst top ten picks of all time if that happens, considering Atlanta’s 2024 circumstances when they made it, and the player they didn’t get that thrives elsewhere will be brought up over and over again.

That doesn’t even account for the possibility that Cousins is not the Kirk Cousins of yesteryear, this team isn’t as good as anticipated, and for one reason or another Penix has to play early and isn’t good. That would be a more immediate disaster, one that might accelerate the timeline described above, but the result would be the same. I’m not waving my hands around gloomily here because I think Penix will be bad—I don’t—but because if he is it’s a big flapping catastrophe.

But the risk also goes beyond that. The Falcons spent to the hilt on offense to build a Cousins-friendly unit that they can win with right now, but in the process of doing so, they essentially ignored the defense. Using a top ten pick—or a first rounder, had they gotten a compelling trade offer—on an impact cornerback or pass rusher was expected to help them a great deal in that regard.

By spending that pick on Penix instead, the Falcons put more pressure on themselves to land impact defenders in the draft’s second day, and to pry open a couple contracts they may not have wanted to touch in order to add free agent help they simply didn’t spend on before. These are not small matters, because a defensive cratering could partially or entirely offset Atlanta’s expected offensive improvement, dragging the team down into mediocrity for the seventh straight season. A top ten pass rusher probably would not have fixed all of that, but that player would’ve given the team more than Penix is likely to give them in 2024, barring a disaster of some kind.

And then there’s just the regular risk of embarrassment, something we Falcons fans have been living with since time immemorial. The only team that sunk more into its QB2 than the Falcons in recent memory was the 49ers, who traded multiple first round picks to grab Trey Lance, who did not work out. But Lance was set to take over the following season; Penix is both older and won’t take over if anything at all goes to plan until 2026 at the earliest. If you think the incredulity and mockery around the league is bad in the immediate aftermath of this pick, watch what happens if Penix doesn’t work out. We’re used to this team putting us in a bad spot, but this would be a truly unique and unprecedented form of that.

So when will we see Penix?

The Falcons will dance around this to avoid further alienating Kirk Cousins, but it’s beyond obvious they effectively looked at his contract as a two-year deal with an option for a third season, depending on how things are going. They’ll have to eat a pretty major cap penalty in 2026 to move on from him, but with Penix on an affordable deal, it’s far from outside of the realm of possibility that it’ll happen.

Given that Cousins is going to be 36 and coming off an Achilles injury, there’s a non-zero chance we see Penix at some point this year, though I’d expect the Falcons to focus on his development and strongly consider keeping Heinicke around this year to serve as gameday relief for Cousins. I can see him getting a little run in 2025 as a warmup, but that will again be dependent on Cousins’ health and performance. This job isn’t going to be his until 2026 or maybe 2027, though I’d bet on the former.

When we do see him, there’s little question that Penix will have to live up to his draft status to justify the selection and to have the Falcons be the kind of perpetually successful franchise Fontenot and Morris want them to be. Given how little success they’ve had in recent years, you could be forgiven for being skeptical about this working out, and I certainly am apprehensive it will not. There’s little for us to do but hope the Falcons surprised us—and Kirk Cousins—for a damn good reason.