Through two games, it's fairly obvious that Kevin Stefanski and the Atlanta Falcons do not look like a match made in heaven. After the Raheem Morris debacle. Atlanta sought stability at head coach, but given what's gone on under center, the QB woes have seen the Stefanski era look anything but stable--although that's about to change now that Michaael Penix Jr. is back.
Between Cooper Rush and now undrafted rookie Jack Strand, the Falcons were down to their third and fourth-string quarterbacks while Penix and Tua Tagovailoa were hurt.
And while it's easy to dunk on for the way he handled both Rush and Strand, it's still very early in the season (and his tenure with the Falcons). . He's going to have to do a lot to help fans rest a little easier, but the fact of the matter is that not everything that has gone wrong through two weeks is his fault.
Right now all that matters is that Penix is again the starter and we can finally evaluate how this new staff will fare, but that doesn't change what happened across the first two weeks: Stefanski deserves both some blame and some grace over the quarterback issues that persisted across Weeks 1 and 2.
Kevin Stefanski's time as the Falcons' head coach is impossible to evaluate
Kevin Stefanski didn't anticipate Tagovailoa getting hurt in practice two days before the opener and having to start Rush off of no first-team practice reps. He also didn't want to have to start his emergency QB for the first two games of the year. No team is winning games with Rush starting, but Michael Penix Jr. is another story.
But here's the thing: in the modern NFL, the only thing you can do is play the cards you're dealt. This is the doomsday scenario this new regime was hoping to avoid. At this point, taking Matt Ryan out of his president of football post would be better than the QB play we've had, which is the same issue that plagued Stefanski in Cleveland--although he's much less directly at fault this time around.
As a supposed "QB guru" , the two-time Coach of the Year deserves some flack for waiting until the third quarter to replace Cooper Rush with Jack Strand knowing the game was already out of hand, and given the starters were already taken out and the offensive line struggled, he set him up to fail.
The other mistake he made wasn't bringing in a higher-quality QB3. Rush is a career journeyman, but isn. Someone like Dillon Gabriel would've made more sense given the Stefanski ties, but the Dirty Birds have been too conservative in their handling of the QB room when they have needed a spark.
Yes, the Falcons are 0-2. Yes, it looks like their playoff drought will extend for a ninth straight year, but it's a long season. There's still 15 more chances for this coaching staff to prove us wrong, so there's no reason to give up on them now, although it's still true that more has to be done to get fans on board--but No. 9 showing out in a TNF upset over the Packers in his first start back would do the trick.
Now that Michael Penix Jr. is back in the starting lineup, then the true evaluation of the Kevin Stefanski era will begin, because these first two weeks have seen him focus on cleaning up a mess no one saw coming. Hopefully this works out and he isn't having to find another QB in the 2027 Draft.
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