I made it through the entirety of Sunday’s shutout loss to the Carolina Panthers solely because I get paid a salary of real American dollars to do so. If you tapped out early, I cannot blame you. After a truly awful outing from Michael Penix, he was benched and Kirk Cousins took over.
The game was well out of hand at that point — Cousins subbed in at quarterback after Penix threw interception No. 2 late in the third quarter, a mistake the Panthers offense turned into yet another score, extending the lead
to 27-0. It doesn’t make sense to leave your starter in there for a variety of reasons — the risk of injury, and the likelihood that continuing to play badly would damage his confidence are two of them.
Kirk didn’t really do anything special, either, and that makes sense, too. There’s no reason to try to air it out and, again, risk injuries in a game they were going to lose anyway. He dinked and dunked seven passes for five receptions and 29 yards.
After the game, unsurprisingly, Falcons head coach Raheem Morris was asked if Cousins would have a chance to compete for the starting job this week.
I know a lot of folks are going to absolutely hate his answer, and I get it. It’s Morris’ job to field the most competitive team he can, and of course making sure you’ve got the best option behind center is key to that. But there are some other factors to consider here.
Penix finished the game having completed 18 of 36 passes for 172 yards, zero touchdowns, and two picks despite being sacked zero times, and the box score really doesn’t convey just how out of it he looked. I’ve talked up his poise time and time again, and I did not see it today. But no matter how today went, he’s still the player who did everything he could to try drag the Falcons to a win (that didn’t happen) in Week 1’s loss to the Bucs. While he wasn’t great against the Vikings in last week’s 22-6 Sunday Night Football win, he did exactly what the Falcons needed him to do: enough.
There’s really no indication that Penix lacks the mental toughness to bounce back from this. But one thing that might change that would be opening up the starting quarterback competition three weeks into the season. With a young quarterback, you’ve got to leave room for growing pains. Nobody expected him to come out here and immediately have an MVP-caliber season, and this is just one game.
Penix is also the guy who spent the whole offseason preparing to be the starter. Just like Penix had a learning curve last season after Cousins spent the offseason preparing to start, I think things would be shaky for Kirk, at least early on, for the same reason.
And while his performance was bad enough that I’m not at all willing to point to this as an excuse — I am curious how the malfunctioning headset impacted Penix today. Adjusting to operating off of sideline hand signals or only hearing partial play calls on the road against an NFC South rival is a perfect storm of terrible circumstances for any quarterback, and especially one with six NFL starts to his name. Penix did say after the game that the headset functioned better as the game went on, but this game got out of hand very early on, so I do wonder how much of an impact it had. But again, it does not excuse the caliber of play today.
For his part, Penix wanted to stay in the game.
But pulling him was the right call, and while I wouldn’t have been upset if Morris had opened up the starting quarterback competition and let Cousins have a shot, it would be wildly reactionary to do that to a young quarterback three games into his first season as a starter because of one terrible game.
