Michael Penix Jr. has started 12 games in his two NFL season. / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images
What is most painful about the news of [Michael Penix Jr.’s injury](https://www.si.com/nfl/michael-penix-jr-knee-injury-update-falcons) is the undercurrent of finality to a grand experiment. We can sit here and make fun of Falcons GM Terry Fontenot for a building process that felt a little more like a tech startup launch—sweeping hype, flashy objects, visions of the future we only read about in comic books (no Steve Ballmer dancing to the Rolling Stones, as far as I can tell)—but isn’t this what it’s all about? At 3–7, Atlanta’s season is not over, per se, but the idea that this team can be what we dreamt it could is starting to look like it is.
The Falcons are not just falling behind in the NFC South, but falling behind in the world the team created around drafting one outsized talent after another each of the past five years.
A tight end, Kyle Pitts, over Ja’Marr Chase and Penei Sewell? Right now, it seems obvious but back then, we’d never seen a player at that position with such wingspan and grace. He looked like Mr. Fantastic.
A running back, Bijan Robinson, over Jalen Carter or Christian Gonzalez? Well, sure, because when you already have Mr. Fantastic, you need the Human Torch as well.
Penix, when you already have Kirk Cousins? Please don’t make me draw out this analogy because I’m running out of Fantastic Four characters. But you get the picture. We siphoned all these players to a coaching staff full of former Rams staffers, the kind of people who make superheroes come to life, and for a moment, it made sense to have your dessert first. To build a team outside-in. To believe that the flying car can, well, actually fly. We ignored Penix’s injury history (two torn ACLs in college) because we had to. We ignored the reality of a player built like Pitts because we wanted to. We ignored the highs and lows of possessing an outlier talent like Robinson because that’s what it’s like to hold the Hope Diamond in your hand. Half the time, you’re just worried about someone breaking it or enough people not looking at it.
We bring all this up because, as much as today is about Penix, it’s not just about him. It’s about the plan and the suspicions that we pushed away. It’s about what the Falcons could have been and what they gave up to get here. It’s about asking ourselves and the Falcons asking themselves, honestly, if they would do it all again, knowing the consequences.
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Atlanta will finish out the season with Kirk Cousins, who still appears to be in recovery from a season-ending Achilles injury that occurred in 2023 with the Vikings before he signed a four-year, $180 million deal in free agency with Atlanta. At 3–7, the 2026 first-round pick that the Falcons handed the Rams for the right to crawl back into the latter stages of the first round last year for James Pearce Jr. (an all-out defensive blitz to upgrade a unit that had struggled, in part, because the Falcons had leaned into building this next-gen offense) is now a top-10 pick—a disastrous proposition not just for Atlanta but for every other team in the NFL seeing a Super Bowl contender getting access to a potential premium player.
When Penix returns to the field, what should it look like responsibly? Are the builders and theorists behind this roster still going to be there? Are the ones who inherit it buying into the idea that this is a superteam?
Those are the conversations that need to be happening in Atlanta now, even though the Falcons, losers of five straight, including the past two in overtime, have a soft landing on the schedule with the Saints and the Jets coming up. Wins can only obscure that nagging, big-picture question for so long. Nothing but a seven-game heater that somehow propels Atlanta into the playoffs with wins over the Seahawks, Rams and Buccaneers in the process—seven games that give us at least some consistent glimpse of the Fantastic Four—will stop the hangover from creeping in.
Still, there’s undoubtedly a part of every Falcons fan that would take those same chances. That would draft all of those same players in succession. That would hire those same coaches. Because, whether it was set up to work or, like a promising startup, sold to make us believe it would, dreaming is what roster construction is all about. It just has to come true.