Falcons’ Week 11 loss saw a painfully familiar Michael Penix Jr. problem resurface

Following a brutal Week 11 divisional loss to the Carolina Panthers, the Atlanta Falcons are forced to confront the one truth this season has tried (and failed) to ignore: everything Atlanta wants to become hinges on whether Michael Penix Jr. can stay on the field. 

And right now, that answer looks shakier than ever. Penix was playing well through three quarters, going 13-of-16 for 175 yards as the Falcons were in clear control of the game. 

Then with 5:22 left in the third quarter, Penix got hit hard on a third-down pass that ultimately led to him being placed on injured reserve .

If the injury itself is the first part of Atlanta’s glaring problem, the next part came the moment Kirk Cousins jogged onto the field in his absence. This should have been the advantage.

A veteran backup, a steady hand, someone who could keep the offense afloat. But Cousins has been anything but steady in his limited action this year. He struggled after replacing Penix in Week 8, and he struggled again in this game against Carolina as the Falcons ended up losing 30-27 in overtime.

So not only is the franchise quarterback showing durability concerns that are impossible to ignore, but the plan behind him hasn’t been good enough to keep the season alive when things go wrong.

Michael Penix Jr.'s injury history threatens to derail the Falcons' future

With Penix, much as Atlanta believed this season marked the start of something new, this injury wasn’t new at all. It was a page torn from Penix’s past. This is now the second knee issue of his "rookie" season and the latest entry in a long injury history that has shadowed him since 2018. 

The Falcons knew it when they drafted him. They studied it in detail during the pre-draft process, poring over every ACL tear, shoulder dislocation, and season cut short. 

Penix had torn the same ACL twice by 2020, dealt with shoulder dislocations in 2020 and 2021, and never played more than seven games in a season at Indiana. But this partially torn ACL is the same knee he bruised earlier this season, and the opposite knee from the one he had surgically repaired.

Sure he rebuilt his durability at Washington with 28 straight starts, elite production, and two full seasons of evidence. But the question he had then os once again the question now: Can the 25-year-old physically hold up at the NFL level?

Sunday didn’t provide a comforting answer.

With Penix the question isn’t talent, its durability. And because of that, it has become the defining risk of the Falcons’ rebuild. Because right now, Atlanta’s entire future hinges on whether Penix can respond the way fans expect whenever he makes his return to the lineup.