When the Atlanta Falcons drafted Washington QB Michael Penix Jr. with the No. 8 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, it sent shudders and gasps across the NFL landscape. The Falcons had just made a huge commitment to veteran Kirk Cousins, after all, and Atlanta is not blessed with the breadth of talent to sacrifice a first-round pick on a player who doesn’t appear to have a path to immediate playing time.
Four months later, it’s playing out exactly in the way most analysts expected: Penix might be pretty good, but we might not see it matter anytime soon. That’s the verdict from Yahoo’s Charles Robinson after he spent some time watching Penix, Cousins and the Falcons during a training camp visit.
Despite Penix throwing “sharp, effortless passes against the Falcons’ first-team defense,” Robinson doesn’t see Penix getting any meaningful action in the regular season. It’s the Kirk Cousins show in Atlanta, with Robinson noting how high the Falcons are on their veteran acquisition.
“Dial in the preseason, because this is geared to be your only shot to see him against an opponent in 2024,” Robinson wrote about Penix in his post on X (formerly Twitter).
It’s a bleak reality check for Falcons fans who are (rightly) excited about Penix’s potential, knowing that a team expected to contend for a division title won’t get anything out of its first-round pick with so many immediately useful players still on the board.