Falcons’ QB Plan Collapses After Penix Injury. What Happens Now?

FLOWERY BRANCH, GA – The Atlanta Falcons confirmed the worst this week, that they have lost Michael Penix Jr. to a season-ending knee injury, and it could be more. Anything else just falls by the wayside after getting news like that.

Penix will undergo his surgery at some point soon, and it will likely cost the entire offseason as he recovers. Falcons head coach Raheem Morris was unable to provide any sort of timetable for his return, but it would be unrealistic to think he could be back in time for the offseason program.

Morris said he had a “guesstimation” that Penix could be back by Week 1 of 2026, but that is also likely in doubt at this point.

They will turn to veteran backup quarterback Kirk Cousins for the remainder of the 2025 season as they look to claw their way back to the .500 mark down the stretch, but the season feels lost. What happens after the final whistle sounds in Week 18 will feel no different.

The situation is the worst-case scenario for the Falcons, who in 2024 set out to do everything in their power to avoid such a predicament. They were aggressive in free agency, signing a veteran Cousins to a lucrative contract, before taking Penix, their perceived quarterback of the future, with the eighth overall pick.

The decision drew intense skepticism league-wide, but Atlanta made it clear they wanted to avoid the situation they currently find themselves in just 18 months later.

“You’ve definitely got to go out and make some different plans when we talk about the offseason,” Morris said Wednesday. “That's always got to be something that's on your mind, regardless, and definitely puts it on your mind a little bit more with this happening.”

The original plan, based on the outs layered into Cousins’ four-year contract, made it appear that the veteran was supposed to start for two seasons before Penix would take over after adjusting to the NFL on the bench. That, of course, did not come to fruition.

Instead, Cousins was benched in Week 16 of 2024, and Penix was thrust into the spotlight down the stretch and took over as the starter in 2025.

The results from this 12-game sample have been a little bit of good, but plenty of bad. Penix flashed his elite arm talent as a rookie over the final three games, but his 2025 has shown that defenses were more than able to adjust to him.

He will finish his first season as a starter with just nine touchdown passes (third-fewest among quarterbacks with 250+ attempts), and his completion percentage (60.1%) is 29th in the NFL. The 1,982 yards and deep passing percentage (9.8%, 20th in the NFL) were a far cry from the explosive potential he flashed down the stretch of last season.

Even if he were entering the offseason healthy, Penix was already set to have a busy few months as he worked on becoming a consistent player for this team.

The injury will, obviously, make that significantly more complicated for a player who will be 26 when next season kicks off and already more than halfway through his rookie contract. Add in the potential for a new staff, and it makes the situation even more complicated for the young man.

“The guy's going to come back stronger for us,” Morris said confidently. “This organization believes in him, his coaches believe in him, his guys believe in him, and he's going to come back strong for us.”

He has to come back stronger because he really does not have much of a choice. The season-ending injury has been a consistent theme for Penix – knee injuries derailed his 2018 and 2020 seasons at Indiana, but shoulder injuries did the same in 2019 and 2020.

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If a new staff is in place, they may not be willing to show the same patience as the one who put so much into getting him here in the first place.

Where the organization goes next will be interesting to watch. The Falcons have an out on Cousins’ remaining deal in March that would spread his dead cap hit ($35 million) over two seasons. It would be surprising if they did not take advantage of that.

Cousins will have seven weeks of football to change their mind, but he will likely be auditioning for his next NFL contract.

If they do move on from Cousins, they will be left with a recovering Penix on an unknown timetable, Easton Stick, and Kyle Trask (on the practice squad) at Flowery Branch. Would they opt to bring in another free agent to serve as a bridge? They don't hold their own first-round pick, and needs elsewhere would make it hard to believe they would pursue a quarterback in later rounds.

The Falcons find themselves in an exceedingly difficult situation, staring down an eighth consecutive season without reaching the .500 mark or the postseason and potentially in the same quarterback hell they thought they climbed out of.

Dismally ironic that this is the very situation they so desperately wanted to avoid.

What the organization chooses to do next may be beyond this staff's control, but it will certainly dictate the future of this franchise.