I’ll admit, when I first saw reports about what Michael Penix Jr. said about the support he gets off the field, I was concerned. The way it was being reported made it sound like Penix claimed to not have support on the sideline — and let’s be real, if that were the case it would absolutely be malpractice and everyone should be fired.
But then I went to the tape, and that’s not really what he said at all
.He was talking about the support he has outside of the building; the mental and emotional support of his
fiancée and some former college coaches. The support inside the building? That’s there.
The fact that not one single person who was covering the now-infamous Penix presser wrote about this quote or talked about it on the air should have been telling. I’ve worked alongside most of the people in the Atlanta media for many year nows, and there is a zero percent chance any of them would have sat on this information if Michael Penix had actually intended what’s being attributed to him here.
Morris was a little exasperated about the response to the reporting on this from people who aren’t inside this building on a regular basis — and he had noticed that nobody in the Atlanta media had bought into the narrative the national media is pushing around Penix.
“It’s a joke,” Morris said about all of the noise around this from outside the building. “[He was] talking about him[self] outside of this building, but in this building, the people around him: DJ (Williams), Zac (Robinson), TJ (Yates) — even before we got him, just in the evaluation process — Ken Zampese — an all hands on deck kind of mentality. And that just continues to happen with moving DJ to quarterbacks coach.”
Morris also mentioned Chandler Whitmer, the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the No. 2-ranked Indiana Hoosiers, as being a factor in Penix’s development when Whitmer was a passing game specialist with the Falcons in 2024.
Quarterbacks coach DJ Williams played quarterback at Grambling State (and his dad, Washington legend Doug Williams, was his head coach). Former Falcons and Texans quarterback TJ Yates, the passing game coordinator in Atlanta, took on an expanded role after former wide receivers coach Ike Hilliard was fired. Ken Zampese, a senior offensive assistant with the Falcons since 2024, has decades of offensive coaching experience, including 13 years as the Bengals’ quarterbacks coach. Offensive coordinator Zac Robinson played at Oklahoma State, was drafted by the Patriots in the seventh round of the 2010 Draft, and then bounced around to practice squads and depth chart spots with the Seahawks, Lions, and Bengals.
That’s a whole lot of quarterback-specific knowledge and experience to lean on in the building.
Speaking of experience, Kirk Cousins has plenty, and Morris said Cousins’ influence as an “elder statesman” has also factored into Penix’s development.
“[Kirk] was able to show him the way on how a professional quarterback that’s played in his league for so long,” Morris said.
Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot spent a lot of time with Penix during the pre-draft process, and Penix remains close with both. And Morris did speak to Penix after the latter’s extremely sad post-loss press conference in Berlin, Germany, hoping to help the young QB understand that the losses aren’t 100% on Penix’s shoulders.
“Those are things you like to talk to him [about],” Morris said Wednesday via ESPN’s Marc Raimondi, literally the same day as Penix’s misinterpreted quote. “And it provides a little bit of relief for him, letting him know it’s OK to be vulnerable in that moment, but at the same time don’t be so disgruntled and hard on yourself that you blame yourself for everything and it’s like, it is the reason why after those tough press conferences, it is my job to go protect him.”
Penix said the conversation with his head coach helped.
“Knowing that everybody in the building, they understand … what’s going on and why we can’t be what we want to be,” Penix said, also via Raimondi. “So … Raheem gave me that perspective and just told me just give myself some grace and not be so hard on myself.”
And Morris and Penix have spoken since this thing blew up.
“He tried to apologize to me about it,” Morris said, laughing. “I said, ‘Get out of my face. You don’t need me to tell you that you were taken out of context.‘”
And to everyone who ran with the narrative that Penix has no support on the sideline or in the building, Morris is not impressed.
“Stop looking for stuff on a young man. You don’t need this stuff on him,” Morris said Friday. “It is what it is. But all of those things people do, it doesn’t matter or affect this building.”
“I just feel bad for the kid. I don’t want the kid having to deal with stuff that doesn’t matter or stuff that’s not real. … Let his problems be his problems,” Morris said.
“Like third downs. Let’s fix those. Don’t make up [a thing] that doesn’t exist.”
