Atlanta’s quarterback dance will be a delicate one

The Falcons want a smooth succession plan at quarterback, but everything else about Kirk Cousins-to-Michael Penix might be bumpy.

I say this far too often about our favorite football team, but we are in uncharted waters here.

Plenty of franchises have decided to draft their next franchise quarterback while a veteran starter was already on the roster, from the Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes (who supplanted Alex Smith) to the Packers with both Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love (who replaced Brett Favre and Rodgers, respectively). In the case of the Packers, both Rodgers and Love sat for three seasons before taking over the job, which is a realistic possibility for Michael Penix after the Atlanta Falcons drafted him eighth overall to eventually supplant Kirk Cousins.

So this has been done before. It just hasn’t been done quite like this, where the ink is still drying on Cousins’ four-year (really 2-3 year, you know NFL contracts) pact with Atlanta that he just signed in March. The Falcons went so hard for Cousins that they’re likely to get a tampering penalty from the league, and before he has taken a single snap with the organization, they have drafted the player he knows will be replacing him. That’s the part where no map exists to guide the Falcons through this.

It creates a delicate dance for Atlanta, something they’re fully aware of. When they decided to swing the pendulum completely away from the mid round selection of Desmond Ridder and an affordable backup in Taylor Heinicke and go to having two starters, they were trying to steer away from disaster and into the smooth sailing that can come from having your quarterback situation figured out with what you view as high-level options for the next five-to-ten years. But they now have to keep Cousins happy and win right now while transitioning to Penix in two-to-three seasons, all without the kind of losing and bad feelings that can submarine a franchise.

Whether that bet pays off depends, first and foremost, on how good Cousins and Penix are on the field. Cousins has to be good enough for this team to win over the next two seasons to fulfill Atlanta’s promise that they won’t be picking in the top ten again and has to not get so burnt out by calls for Penix to start that he demands out before the team is ready to turn to the youngish quarterback. Penix has to be good enough to wrest the job from Cousins in two or three seasons and win—preferably a lot—to justify the investment in him. Both men have to be consummate professionals, the Falcons have to be careful not to pull the Penix ripcord too early, and this all has to happen against the backdrop of impatient fans and a media landscape that largely has already decided the whole situation is destined to be a mess. Other than that, though, it should be pretty clean.

The Falcons knew what they were getting into, I must repeat. This piece from Yahoo! Sports NFL columnist Charles Robinson makes it clear that Arthur Blank was on board, and that the Falcons saw Penix not just as a really good player but potentially a special one, one of the four or so best players in this class on their own board. From Robinson:

With his grade established, the franchise decision makers stepped back and looked at the more expansive quarterback window. What they found was a path fraught with potential pitfalls. The 2025 quarterback class currently does not appear to have the quality or depth of the 2024 class, and as it stands, not a single player is perceived by the Falcons to have the talent Penix brings to the table. Furthermore, if the team achieves its expected level of success with Cousins over the next two seasons, its draft positioning will be weakened and present a more difficult angle to finding his successor in the 2025 or 2026 drafts.

That’s a stunning level of praise, and it makes it clear that the Falcons were one of a small handful of teams that saw Penix as a top ten pick—the Saints were among the teams looking to reportedly move up for him—and that they viewed him as a can’t-miss player. Picking him likely seemed like a no-brainer after the Falcons came to that conclusion, but everything that follows is anything but.

I said this on our live draft show and will repeat it here: This is not a desperate move or a rash one, but a startling show of faith in Penix, in Cousins’ tolerance and temperament, and in Raheem Morris’s ability to thread a needle. This organization, from owner to general manager to coach, believe this is not just the right move but a move that will absolutely work out and vindicate the approach. Given the team’s lack of success in recent years, it’s very difficult to blindly trust it’s going to work, to put it mildly, and the team’s bet that this will motivate Cousins to new heights rather than shake his confidence after he thought he was getting job security in Atlanta is a big bet indeed.

If it works out, the Falcons will have pulled off a minor miracle, balancing their win-now desires with their long-term success with only a (likely) slightly disgruntled Kirk Cousins at the end of it. Getting there is going to require good fortune along with a deft touch.