Did the Falcons overstock their QB shelf?

Atlanta drafts the supremely talented Michael Penix after it had paid outrageous money for Kirk Cousins.

Kirk Cousins

Michael Penix is not the problem. Michael Penix probably will be the solution, someday. He has enormous hands, throws the best and most accurate fastball in the quarterback draft class of 2024, and he has risen, time and again, when it’s time to play the biggest games. In some ways he is the C.J. Stroud of this group, a guy whom the scouts would never have doubted if they’d been listening to what their eyes were testifying. As it was, Penix was the fourth quarterback taken Thursday night, by Atlanta with the No. 8 pick of the first round.

In fact, if you just cut off the sentence right there, the Falcons would gotten unanimous applause. Atlanta picks Penix at 8….but then there’s the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say.

And that was the tremor that ran through Detroit’s delirious draft party. Because on March 11, the Falcons gave $100 million of guaranteed U.S. currency to Kirk Cousins, formerly Minnesota’s quarterback, a 35-year-old of decent achievement. The deal was four years, $180 million, with a $50 million signing bonus.

To most lineal thinkers, Atlanta would try to fill one of its myriad holes with the eighth pick. Since the Falcons were 21st in sacks and 29th in takeaways, it seemed logical to pick Alabama edge rusher Dallas Turner. Since they intercepted only eight passes in 17 games, 10 of which were losses, they might have considered someone like cornerback Terrion Arnold, also from Alabama. And if they were just interested in amassing talent, they could have made the enormously popular decision to draft Brock Bowers, the spectral tight end from Georgia.

Instead they took Penix. As general manager Terry Fonenot said, “If you believe in a quarterback, you have to take him.” Fontenot also drew a parallel with Green Bay, which took Jordan Love in 2020 even though Aaron Rodgers was there. Love sat and watched and learned for three years, until the Packers traded Rodgers before last season, and Love quarterbacked Green Bay to the NFC semifinals.

That’s a dubious analogy for several reasons. Love was the 26th pick in the draft, not the eighth. Green Bay was coming off a 13-3 season, not a 7-10. It was much better situated for such indulgences. The common thread is the reaction of the veteran quarterbacks. Rodgers was undeniably miffed that the Packers took Love instead of a catcher or a runner, and Cousins’ agent said Cousins was confused by Atlanta’s decision, particularly because he only learned of it as it was happening. On Friday, Penix said he had talked with Cousins and thought everything was smooth. One should wait until the Falcons’ first loss, or Cousins’ first couple of interceptions, to see if smoothness prevails.

What Fontenot and owner Arthur Blank have done is create the possiblity of an old-fashioned Quarterback Controversy for coach Raheem Morris, in his first year. If Cousins has two productive, healthy seasons, Penix will be idle for two of the four years of his relatively cheap rookie contract (teams can pick up the fifth-year option for its first-round players). Penix will also be 26 by the 2026 season. If Cousins is either ineffectual or hurt, the fans will demand Penix, and the Falcons will still bear Cousins’ salary-cap burden no matter what Penix does.And if Atlanta really did target Penix from the beginning of this process, it seems even odder that they would pay so much for Cousins, who is coming off a torn Achilles. Either Penix or J.J. McCarthy, whom Minnesota took with pick No. 11, would have been there at No. 8, under all scenarios. Unless Blank, the owner of Home Depot, is preparing to stage a 2-for-1 Quarterback Special, it seems the Falcons took the opportunity to waste an opportunity.

But maybe it’s the sign of how the quarterbacks run the league. Losing your QB is the quickest way for your season to lose its meaning. Pedestrians like Trent Dilfer and Rex Grossman and Tony Eason and David Woodley don’t ride their teams to Super Bowls anymore. You need a star, and you’d better back up your star with a guy who can win, because they’re playing 17 games a season these days, and the pass rushers are far, far better than the guys who are trying to block them.

The Falcons held onto Matt Ryan far past his expiration date. The past two years they’ve tried to get by with third-round pick Desmond Ridder, and backups Marcus Mariota and Taylor Heinecke. Ridder was actually the second QB picked in 2022, behind Pittsburgh’s Kenny Pickett, in a year when San Francisco used the very last pick to keep Brock Purdy from going undrafted. Last year the viable quarterbacks were gone by the time Atlanta’s No. 8 pick came up, so the Falcons took Bijan Robinson, who provided eight touchdowns.

The plan is for Cousins and/or Penix to give Drake London and Kyle Pitts a justification for all that wind-sprinting and weight-lifting, a reason to show up on Sundays. Both are former first-round picks who were supposed to beat teams from 35,000 feet. Instead, Pitts has caught 149 passes in 44 NFL games for six touchdowns. London has 141 catches in 33 games for six TDs in two seasons. They will be joined by Darnell Mooney, a free agent from the Bears.

Former coach Arthur Smith never consistently unlocked the possibilities therein, which is why he’s now Pittsburgh’s offensive coordinator. Too often Atlanta’s games came down to bobbing and weaving and getting Yonghoe Koo in position for a game-winning field goal, which he often delivered. The Falcons have been 7-10 in each of the past three seasons and haven’t had a winning season or a playoff appearance since 2017, which is notable because their division, the NFC South, looks like a trailer park during tornado season. The Falcons also have the fifth-worst lifetime winning percentage of any NFL team. So the urgency is clear.

And there’s always the chance that Penix will eclipse all these messy details. Want to talk about windows? Penix fires longballs into windows the size of your rear-view mirror. He played four years at Indiana and never finished a season healthy, but Washington was 23-3 in his two years. Against the toughest competition, like Oregon, Texas, Oregon State and Utah, Penix threw 13 touchdowns and three interceptions last year. Like Stroud, Penix hasn’t sold everyone on his mobility, and he couldn’t get away from Michigan’s marauders in the CFP Championship Game, but he was sacked only 31 times in 1,759 dropbacks in college, and he ran the 40 in 4.46 seconds at the combine.

On Friday the Falcons tried to prove they weren’t Blanking out. They took defensive tackle Ruke Orhorhoro from Clemson in the second round, edge rusher Bralen Trice in the third. Even those picks weren’t conventional; Orhorhoro had 12 sacks and nine pass breakups last year but is said to need polish, and Trice’s size and strength have been questioned. But Morris, who was the Rams’ defensive coordinator when they last won the Super Bowl, was involved heavily in those evaluations. He had several Rams who didn’t fit the specs but made all the plays, one of which was Aaron Donald.

Atlanta’s fourth-round pick might have been the most immediately promising. Oregon’s Brandon Dorius fits the profile of a dynamic defensive lineman who can find up-the-middle paths to quarterbacks.

Without the Falcons it would have been a pro forma first round. The Bears suddenly became a ballistic offense, at least on paper, with first pick Caleb Williams throwing and ninth pick Rome Odunze catching. Bowers went to the Raiders, who took tight end Michael Mayer last year. As the Vikings said when they added Randy Moss to a receiving room that included Chris Carter, make your strengths stronger.

The Rams took two Florida State defenders, Jared Verse and Braden Fiske, who will be happy to learn that, in this league, they’ll be in the playoffs if they win all their games.

The Chiefs jumped on Texas’ Xavier Worthy, with his record 4.21 40-yard performance at the combine, as a possible facsimile of Tyreek Hill.

And the Colts, always intrigued by raw material, provoked some knowing nods when they took UCLA edge rusher Laiatu Latu 15th (the first defensive player drafted) and Texas receiver Adonai Mitchell, a geyser of talent, in the second round. Mitchell said he was “kind of pissed” to be going that low, but the word on Draft Street was that he didn’t interview well. Chris Ballard, the Colts’ general manager, responded by saying he had read “some of the bullshit that was said on TV. Unnamed soure, bad interview, that’s such bullshit. It f—-------g is. It’s bullshit. Like, put your name on it. We tear these young men down. I’m tired, we tear these young men down. These are 21, 22 year old men and if people out there can tell me they’re perfect in their lives, it’s crap, it’s crap. I apologize for the language. I don’t, but I do.”

One thing’s for sure. Nobody will say Ballard is a bad interview.

But if you measure draft success by the ripples made, the Falcons easily won the Gil Brandt Trophy for 2024. Until it plays out, we’re only left to conclude that two in the hand is better than none on the bench, as long as those hands aren’t tied.