Michael Penix Jr. will start for the Falcons on Thursday night against the Packers. Atlanta made it official Sunday, and the timing tells you everything about how the first two weeks went.
Penix has not played a snap since tearing his ACL midway through the 2025 season. He had surgery in early November and missed the final seven games. He was medically cleared for full team work before the third week of the preseason, which means he has been available in some form for a month.
The clearance was not what changed. What changed is that Atlanta ran out of reasons to keep waiting.
The Offense Hit Rock Bottom in Carolina
The Falcons are 0-2 and have the worst red zone profile in football, which is to say they do not have one. Through two games, Atlanta is the only offense in the league that has not reached the red zone. Not scored in it. Reached it.
Cooper Rush started both games. He accounted for three turnovers in the Week 2 loss to Carolina, one fumble and two interceptions, and got pulled in the third quarter for undrafted rookie Jack Strand. When your emergency plan is a rookie making his debut in a division game, the emergency plan has failed.
So Penix goes Thursday. This is not a triumphant return. It is a team that has nothing left to protect.
He Has Been Telling Everyone He Was Close
The interesting wrinkle is that Penix himself pumped the brakes earlier this month.
“I just told him I’m not where I want to be right now,” Penix said. “And I want to be able to be 100% so I can help the team win football games. And I’m really close. Really close.”
That is a quarterback who has been burned before. Penix has said he came back too early from previous knee injuries in college and did not like the results. He wanted the strength back, not just the clearance.
The coaching staff has been consistently positive about what it has seen in practice, describing a quarterback moving inside and outside the pocket without obvious limitations.
The Verdict
A short week against Green Bay is a brutal reintroduction for a quarterback 10 months removed from ACL surgery, playing behind a line that has already gotten two quarterbacks beat up. Nobody drew this up.
But Atlanta has no other move. Rush has been given two games and produced three turnovers and zero red zone trips. Strand is an undrafted rookie. Penix is the 2024 first-round pick this franchise traded its future on, and at some point you find out what you have.
Thursday is that night. If Penix looks like himself, the Falcons’ season restarts at 0-2 with a real quarterback. If he does not, Atlanta has a much bigger problem than a slow start.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.