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Michael Penix Jr.'s duality makes the Falcons fascinating

September 28, 2025
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Michael Penix Jr. has the raw talent to be a franchise NFL quarterback. Whether or not he gets there will hinge significantly on his 2025.

The eighth overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft — landed just months after the Atlanta Falcons signed a hobbled Kirk Cousins to a $180 million deal — showed enough promise at the end of his rookie season to earn the starting job this fall. Penix’s modus operandi as a rookie was clear; spray the ball all over the field and showcase the promise of a big, accurate arm. It led to a 1-2 record as a starter and just a 58 percent completion rate, but his 10.5 air yards per throw and 14.3 percent deep ball rate would have each been top three marks among qualified starters.

That’s important in a league defined by downfield success. But after a solid Week 1 performance in a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Penix fell off. He didn’t need to throw much in a defensive rock fight against fellow 2024 first round QB JJ McCarthy in Week 2. His Week 3? Disastrous. He threw 14 passes that traveled at least 13 yards downfield and completed as many to Carolina Panthers defenders (one) as his own receivers.

The spotlight shined bright on him at roughly the one-quarter mark of the 2025 NFL season. An improved-but-still-average Washington Commanders defense stood in the way between him and a revival, one week after failing to drive the Falcons inside the 30-yard line of the Panthers and their then-24th-ranked defense.

With a 34-27 win and 313 passing yards, Penix put more evidence in the “Franchise Quarterback” basket. But it wasn’t all roses.

Week 4 put Penix’s strengths and weaknesses on display. He was smart enough to lean on his playmakers for easy gains, like this quasi-pick play that let Bijan Robinson run unencumbered for 60-plus yards in the kind of halfback wheel play even the most basic College Football ’24 player could pull off:

He was talented enough to resume a rich NFC South tradition of roasting Marshon Lattimore, delivering an absolutely perfect strike on a Drake London out-and-up on another scoring drive:

He also got thrown off schedule by trying to look off defensive help juuuuuust a beat too long, allowing pressure to create a back-foot throw and turn what should have been a Robinson touchdown into a near-interception:

He couldn’t avoid disaster in the second half when he threw a line drive at Mike Sainristil rather than a floater over him to set up a Washington field goal:

This has been the Penix experience to date. Enough potential to suggest he’s a franchise cornerstone. Enough frustration to prolong the eternal suffering of Falcons fans. Penix was relatively reserved Sunday afternoon in a game his team led for more than 55 minutes. He only threw two deep passes and had a single scramble for five yards.

But he mostly avoided mistakes and leaned on the array of former first round skill players designed to buoy him amidst choppy seas. On Sunday, he didn’t push the ball but instead took what he was given en route to big gains in a game where he had to only protect a lead rather than try to regain it.

How are the Falcons making Penix’s life easier?

Another marker of Penix’s growth is coming from his own roster. The Falcons have changed Kyle Pitts’ role following a stretch of lackluster seasons that may or may not have been related to the torn MCL he suffered in 2022. Indeed, much of his 2025 revival has been his use as a more common short-range safety valve rather than a field-stretching presence up the sideline or seam despite his quarterback’s green light to throw long.

Instead, Pitts’ average target distance has dropped from 10.5 yards downfield in his Pro Bowl 2021 and 13.4 in 2022 to just 5.0 coming into Week 4. That’s led to fewer yards per target, but with a career-high 4.0 yards of separation per target, his catch rate has risen from 58.9 percent from 2021 to 2024 to a personal-best 82.6. His first touchdown of 2025 came on a toss approximately one yard downfield.

Those short routes help set up the long ones that follow, so while Pitts has gone from a home run swing to a batter who’s looking for contact, he’s still capable of doing damage in big moments. Let’s go to the game-icing fourth quarter drive. On his first third-and-long, Penix finds the tight end with whom he’s built a short-range rapport 15 yards downfield:

Three downs later, Atlanta trusts Penix to make a similar throw to the other sideline. The placement isn’t as pretty, but the result is the same: a clock-crushing first down.

It’s clear the Falcons have trusted Penix since his arrival. After all, he got the chance to start late in the season for a 7-7 team in the playoff hunt (though, admittedly, Cousins’ inability to move around the pocket was a big factor). He’s had the green light to sling it throughout his brief career. On Sunday, he understood his assignment and peppered the Commanders with short passes to his playmakers, ultimately creating the space necessary for big throws into single-coverage that decided the game.

This is who Penix can be as a second-year quarterback. He can read the room and make the right decision, on time. He can pick and choose his shots downfield when given a cushion. But if he spams those big throws, like he did in order to prove his worth as a rookie or in an effort to throw his team back from a double-digit deficit, he and the Falcon offense become predictable and stoppable.

What is Michael Penix Jr.? He’s an undeniably talented quarterback still figuring out his processing power behind the line of scrimmage. He’s the guy who can pilot Atlanta to wins against quarterbacks who weren’t starters a year ago (McCarthy, Marcus Mariota) but crumble into dust against a forgettable Panthers team. He’s a quarterback you can trust to make the right throws downfield until you can’t.

All that makes him a wildly entertaining quarterback for a wildly entertaining team. Will it make him the franchise quarterback the Falcons badly need? It’s still too soon to tell.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Michael Penix Jr.’s duality makes the Falcons fascinating

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