Falcons coach Raheem Morris admitted last week that Atlanta will have to make some quarterback moves for the 2026 season with Michael Penix Jr. About recovering the ACL.
Penix is expected to undergo surgery this week in Los Angeles, and his recovery is expected to take nine months, sources told ESPN.
If the nine-month period holds, Penix could be ready for the start of the 2026 season, but there are no guarantees, especially for players who have injured their acls.
Players recovering from other ACL surgeries sometimes take a long time to come back, and no one knows how Penix’s recovery will play out.
While they still have high hopes for Penix and are counting on him to bounce back, the Falcons don’t know when he will return and will have to deal with the quarterback position in the offseason.
“He did, 100 percent,” Morris told reporters last week. “You definitely have to go out and make different plans when you talk about the offseason, but we’ll talk about that and deal with that when we get there.
“Right now we have to prepare the new saints of Orreans, and that’s what we’re going to do. That should always be something on your mind, though, and it definitely puts you on your mind a little bit when this happens.”
One option would be Kirk Cousin, who is in need of being the starter’s starter on Sunday in New Orleans.
Cousins has two years left on his contract but there is no guaranteed money left. He is scheduled to make $35 million in Base Salary over the next two years – a figure close to the NFL’s consideration for a player who didn’t play much last season.
Atlanta could look to acquire a more expensive veteran and certainly upgrade to draft a quarterback elsewhere. But the position, as Morris notes, will have to be considered.
Atlanta’s hopes, season and future took a big hit Sunday, when penix extinguished the field in what was a further loss of time in the separation of half of the opponent’s distance. The game left the Falcons without their quarterback and a 3-7 record heading into Sunday’s game against the last-place Saints (2-8).
It marks only the fifth injury — the last in eight seasons between college and the NFL — for Penix, who tore his right ACL twice while at Indiana.
Morris noted that Penix is ”battle tested” and said the second-year quarterback “has done nothing but come back strong every chance he’s been given.”
“My brother will come back strong for us,” said Morris. “This organization believes in him. His coaches believe in him. His guys believe in him, and he will come back strong for us.”
Penix, 25, has completed 60.1% of his passes this season for 1,982 yards, nine touchdowns and three interceptions.
This could be the eighth straight season without a playoff berth for the Falcons, their longest drought since an eight-year streak from 1983 to 1990.
Making matters worse is the fact that Atlanta doesn’t have its first 2026 pick, which would be a top 10 pick; That pick was traded in April to Los Angeles for the 2025 first-round draft pick that the Falcons used on tight end James Pearce Jr.
Now Atlanta is without their franchise quarterback and their first pick, trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces and navigate the future and they can.
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