Michael Penix Says Falcons Offense Should Be ‘Best in the League’

Atlanta missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season in 2024, but the young quarterback sees talent at skill positions and a great offensive line.

Michael Penix Jr. of the Atlanta Falcons looks to throw against the Seattle Seahawks at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Oct. 20, 2024. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

The Atlanta Falcons are coming off an 8-9 season, their seventh straight with both a losing record and missing the playoffs. The team ranked a middling 13^th in points scored, threw the third-most interceptions and ranked 20^th in red zone scoring.

Yet second-year quarterback Michael Penix Jr. has high expectations.

Penix actually has the highest of outlooks for Atlanta in 2025. After starting all of three games last season, Penix thinks the Falcons should have the best offense in the NFL this year as he told reporters on the first day of training camp on July 24 when asked about the unit’s potential.

“We should be the best in the league with the guys we’ve got around us,” Penix said. “We’ve got a great offensive line as well—those guys work extremely hard in the trenches, with [OL] Coach [Dwayne] Ledford leading those guys. We should be unstoppable. So that’s our goal. We want to be No. 1 in all categories on the offensive side of the ball.”

On paper, the Falcons should be among the NFL’s best offenses considering the lofty draft statuses of their recent first-round selections. From 2021-24, each of Atlanta’s first-round picks was an offensive playmaker at a skill position. Not only were they first rounders, but they were all top 10 picks: tight end Kyle Pitts in 2021 (No. 4 overall), wide receiver Drake London in 2022 (No. 8 overall), running back Bijan Robinson in 2023 (No. 8 overall), and Penix last year (No. 8 overall).

To this point, only Robinson has lived up to his billing, as Pitts and London have shown flashes but have yet to display consistency. It’s way too early to judge Penix—he has just three NFL starts under his belt. He replaced veteran Kirk Cousins for the final three games last season, and he didn’t play much better than the longtime quarterback.

Cousins led the NFL with 16 interceptions, but he also threw 18 touchdowns, while Penix had an even ratio of three touchdowns and three interceptions. Cousins also had a better completion percentage, averaged more yards per attempt, and had a better passer rating than the rookie.

But Atlanta fans can take some solace in the fact that as a team, the Falcons did light up the scoreboard with Penix under center compared with Cousins. Over Cousins’ 14 starts, the Falcons averaged 20.9 points per game, while over Penix’s three starts, the team put up 32 points per game.

Penix is clearly entering his first season as a starter with plenty of confidence. Cousins is still on the team as a backup, but Penix knowing he’s atop a depth chart, with a litany of high-potential offensive weapons at his disposal, makes him believe he can dazzle on the field just as he did over six years in college.

“Yeah, it was very important,” Penix said about those three starts last year. “Just knowing, just being able to go out there and get those games with full-speed reps. It instills confidence, knowing I can go out there and do the same thing that you saw in college and all my life.”

The Falcons are hoping that Penix’s short stint as a starter can have the same type of effect in Year 2 as the Kansas City Chiefs experienced with Patrick Mahomes over his first two seasons.

After sitting on the bench for 16 weeks as a rookie, Mahomes played in his first NFL game in the final week of the 2017 season. Even though he had zero touchdowns and one interception in the game, he impressed the Chiefs enough to be awarded the starting job the next season. That season would see Mahomes win league MVP, pass for a league-high 50 touchdowns, and lead the Chiefs to the AFC title game. And as Penix may be aware, that season Kansas City was the league’s No. 1 offense in both points scored and yards gained.

The Falcons have been the league’s best offense only once, during the 2016 season when they made it to the Super Bowl behind Matt Ryan, who would win league MVP. Atlanta hasn’t finished better than 10^th in offense since then, and its current seven-year drought without a playoff appearance is the second-longest active drought in the NFL, trailing only the Jets (14 seasons).

Atlanta has also finished under .500 in each of the last seven years, which is one shy of tying the franchise’s longest sub-.500 streak of eight years from 1983-90.