Would Dallas Turner or Laiatu Latu have been potential game-plan wreckers coming off the edge for the Falcons?
Yes.
Would cornerback Quinyon Mitchell have represented a huge upgrade in the secondary and been a useful hedge with A.J. Terrell going into the last year of his contract?
Certainly.
Do the Falcons need help on defense more than offense?
You don’t need to pore over the all-22 game film to know the answer to that one.
(But, just to be sure, the answer also is yes.)
Is the selection of quarterback Michael Penix Jr. with the No. 8 pick bereft in sense or logic?
Actually, I don’t think so. And the reason is the player that Penix presumably will succeed some day. Sooner or later – presumably sooner – the Falcons will need to replace Kirk Cousins, their deluxe free-agent signee. And to maintain their aspirations of being a playoff fixture after Cousins’ time with the Falcons ends, they almost certainly will need a franchise quarterback. That is the first and absolutely critical piece. It’s the lesson that the Falcons learned again this past season with Desmond Ridder.
In other words, they’ll need someone like Penix, or at least someone like the Falcons believe Penix can be.
But if the Falcons win as many games with Cousins as they expect (or hope?), they won’t be in position to get a player with Penix’s potential in the next two years because they’ll be drafting much lower than No. 8. So, presented with the chance to secure a talented quarterback with the potential to be a franchise player, it makes sense to lock him down. You don’t know if you’ll get a chance at someone like him again, at least not without significant cost.
In a non-Penix world, imagine the Falcons go to the playoffs the next two years with Cousins and end up with, say, the No. 24 pick, and identify the quarterback that they believe can be Cousins’ eventual replacement. Moving up from No. 24 to inside the top 10 would require a huge cost.
Or they could try to go back into the free-agent market to find Cousins’ replacement in two years. However, there’s no guarantee the Falcons would be the team to sign a player like that, and second, he’d take up an enormous portion of the salary cap like Cousins has and limit the team’s ability to build up the rest of the roster. And, really, there’s not even a certainty that such a player would be available in the first place. Cousins, after all, could never have been an option for the Falcons had he chosen to re-up with the Vikings.
Could they have tried to draft a quarterback in a later round, either this year or next, and hoped they could develop him into a potential franchise quarterback?
Yes, but, you’ll remember they tried that with Ridder. And Ridder aside, the odds of that working out just aren’t very good.
So, basically, this was the best chance that the Falcons could expect to have (if all goes according to plan) to take a swing at a potential cornerstone quarterback.
A player like Turner, Latu or Mitchell would help the Falcons win immediately far more than Penix will. But the potential for Penix to be far more valuable to the Falcons over the next several years after Cousins is without question greater.
And, even better, Penix can sit behind Cousins and learn from a veteran for (presumably) two seasons, time that figures only to increase his chances of being a success. Jordan Love is only the latest quarterback who used his time as a quarterback-in-waiting to his (and his franchise’s) benefit. If offensive coordinator Zac Robinson is the quarterback guru he’s advertised to be, Penix’s two-year apprenticeship could prove immensely valuable.
And while Cousins does have a four-year contract, it’s essentially a two-year deal. He is guaranteed $100 million, but only $10 million of that is paid out after the first two years. (Pardon me for a moment while I lose my marbles over the words, “Only $10 million.”) It’s difficult to be confident in the notion that Cousins will be a productive starter two seasons from now at age 38. It would seem like the Falcons’ plan would be for Penix to sit behind Cousins for two years and then hand the keys over in 2026.
Credit: D. Orlando Ledbetter
My concern about the Falcons’ decision to sign Cousins was that it looked like the Falcons were going for it all in a two- to three-year window, and that it was a risky play as it was. Cousins will be 36 when this season starts and is coming off a torn Achilles tendon. The list of quarterbacks to take their team to the Super Bowl at his age is not a long one.
And further, were the Falcons without a solid succession plan for Cousins, the likely course would be that they would be competitive but perhaps not Super Bowl-worthy in the next two years, and then they’d be back where they were before signing Cousins – in need of an answer at quarterback.
Penix obviously doesn’t come with any guarantees that he’ll be that answer. He has a history of injuries, he has a funky delivery and, as everyone saw, he was beaten to a pulp and was unimpressive against Michigan in the College Football Playoff Championship game.
But despite the injuries, he started all 28 games in his two seasons at Washington with a 25-3 record and had 67 touchdowns with 19 interceptions. In 2023, he led a Huskies team whose over/under win total before the season was 7.5 to a 14-1 record, including a 6-1 record against ranked teams.
It’s definitely arguable that he’s not worthy of the No. 8 pick. Draft guru Daniel Jeremiah of NFL.com rated him the No. 35 overall pick, for instance. We’ll be left to wonder if it’s possible that the Falcons could have traded up in the second round to get him or found a way to trade down from No. 8 and still picked him up later in the first. But the way quarterbacks were snapped up after No. 8, it’s easy to conclude that he wouldn’t have lasted long.
J.J. McCarthy from Michigan went at No. 10 (ranked No. 20 by Jeremiah) to Minnesota. Bo Nix of Oregon (ranked No. 33 by Jeremiah) was taken at No. 12 by Denver.
Either way, in four years, if Mercedes-Benz Stadium is awash in fans wearing Michael Penix jerseys and the future of the franchise looks bright, no one is going to care that the Falcons reached on him in April 2024.
Yes, it’s also possible that Penix is not the guy. But it’s a leap that the Falcons were most likely going to have to make eventually to find Cousins’ successor. Doing it now, coach Raheem Morris and his staff get two years to try to determine that about Penix while he’s on the roster and they didn’t have to trade up for him.
Is it a gamble?
Yes.
Was it one worth taking?
I’d say also yes.
