What’s the Falcons’ plan at QB after the NFL Draft’s most surprising pick?

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Michael Penix Jr. is fine with being “the future” at quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, even if nobody knows when that future will begin.

“I’m here to do whatever I can to help this team win football games,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing for me. I’m a team guy and I love winning.”

Atlanta’s selection of the University of Washington quarterback with the No. 8 pick of the draft was easily the most surprising selection of the NFL Draft, and it has set up a succession plan at quarterback that the Falcons hope will look prescient and become the new model around the league. First, though, they have to figure out how it will work.

The Falcons picked Penix 44 days after giving free-agent quarterback Kirk Cousins a four-year contract worth at least $100 million and potentially as much as $180 million. That sort of investment — the largest total value free-agency deal in NFL history — seemed to rule out the possibility of Atlanta’s addition of a quarterback early in the draft. For everyone except the Falcons, at least.

“You want to put yourself in position to get a guy when you’ve got a guy,” first-year head coach Raheem Morris said to explain his team’s unconventional thinking.

Cousins will be Atlanta’s starting quarterback in what Morris has referred to as “the short term.” The word “short” is undefined in this scenario, though. Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot said he would be fine if Penix is a backup for “four or five years.” Morris echoed the GM.

“Nothing would make me feel better than watching Kirk Cousins play the next four years,” Morris said. “That means there are some good things going on.”

It would also mean Penix would spend at least 80 percent of his rookie contract sitting on the bench. This is not how NFL teams usually handle top-10 quarterback picks. At all.

Forty quarterbacks have been selected in the top 10 of the draft since 2000. All of them started at least one game of their rookie season. Thirty-one started 10 or more games, according to TruMedia. Of the 59 quarterbacks taken anywhere in the first round since 2000, 36 started 10 or more games their first season.

The general response to Atlanta’s plan can best be described as pitchforks and torches adjacent. Most importantly, Cousins was not a fan of the pick or the fact he wasn’t informed of it until moments before it happened, a league source told The Athletic.

“Obviously, it put a little damper on the mood (Thursday) night, but that’s the nature of our beast, the nature of our business, the competitive stuff,” Morris said. “But I’m fired up about my quarterbacks, all of them.”

Penix made his first trip to the Falcons facility one day after the selection, flying in with his parents and grandparents on owner Arthur Blank’s private jet, and said the prospect of starting his pro career not actually playing didn’t diminish his excitement about joining the team.

“As far as what anyone else thinks about the decision that was made, I have no control over that,” he said. “All I can control is what I bring to this team, and I know I’m going to be a great leader not just on the field but off as well, and I’m going to be a great person and a great teammate as well. I’m very excited to be able to do that.”

The Falcons’ decision to take a quarterback with the eighth pick was contingent on Penix’s availability. They would have taken another position at No. 8 rather than draft any of the other quarterbacks on the board at that pick, Morris said. That included J.J. McCarthy, who was selected 10th by the Minnesota Vikings, and Bo Nix, who was selected 12th by the Denver Broncos.

“If we had come out of this draft and not drafted a quarterback, we would have been fine with that,” Fontenot said. “If you truly believe in a player, you don’t pass him up.”

The Falcons won’t ask Cousins to mentor Penix. Instead, the team expects the younger quarterback to pay attention and learn on the job, essentially drafting behind Cousins while he learns to be a professional quarterback, Morris said.

“You can’t put that on Kirk,” the coach said. “Kirk’s job is just to be a professional. Kirk will show Michael by how he goes about his business every single day. It’s the young man’s responsibility to learn from Kirk. Kirk Cousins is absolutely phenomenal. (Penix) is in a position where he can just follow and do the right things.”

Despite Cousins’ displeasure with the circumstances surrounding the pick, the veteran called Penix on Thursday night.

“We had a very good conversation,” Penix said. “I’m going to keep it just between me and him right now, but it was definitely a good conversation. I’m super excited to work with him, and he said he’s the same with me.”

When Cousins signed with Atlanta in March, he said the Falcons’ commitment to him for the long term was a factor.

“In Minnesota in the last couple of offseasons, it was trending somewhat toward being year to year, and as we talked to Atlanta it felt like this was a place that if I play to the level I expect to play, I can retire a Falcon,” Cousins said. “That was something that really excited me, and that’s the goal, but you have to earn the right to do that.”

Another factor, Cousins said then, was alignment within the organization.

“A coach told me this when I was a young player in the league — when the owner, general manager, head coach and quarterback are on the same page, that’s when you really have a chance to go win a Super Bowl, and as I looked at the Atlanta Falcons, I believed strongly that the owner, general manager, head coach and quarterback can all be on the same page, and that’s exciting for me.”

The Falcons’ decision-makers said Cousins still has their unwavering support.

“We’re very, very excited about Kirk, that has not changed,” Fontenot said.

However, Penix’s presence combined with Cousins’ contract gives the Falcons a logical transition point in the not-so-distant future. Ninety million dollars of Cousins’ guaranteed $100 million will be paid in the first two years of his deal, and the Falcons could release him after the 2025 season and accrue only $25 million in dead-cap penalty.

“Kirk does not have to look over his shoulder every time he throws a bad pass, that is not the case,” Morris said.

When will the Falcons know it’s the right time to move from Cousins to Penix? The question is hard to answer without a crystal ball, Morris said.

“As we all know, our whole game is based on winning and losing,” he said. “It just is what it is. We are ultimately all judged on that.”

Morris emphasized that Cousins and Penix both can win from the pocket with quick processing of defenses and route progressions, which makes Cousins an ideal model for the younger quarterback. And everyone involved in Atlanta’s evaluation of Penix marveled at his ability to make every throw.

“In the National Football League, you have to be able to be a pocket passer. Any of these high-profile offenses that we’re talking about, we’re talking about a pocket passer for the most part,” Morris said. “A lot of things we saw in Kirk are the things we saw on tape (with Penix), the live arm, we love the fight in the kid, we love the interactions we had with him in the process.”

Penix will enter his Falcons career without any expectations about when he’ll get his chance but said he will prepare to be the starter from the beginning.

“I know I’m going to put in a ton of work to make sure that when I do step on that field there is not going to be a beat missed, and I’m going to be successful within this offense and this team,” he said. “I’m excited for all of it. You never know when your number could be called so you have to be ready. I’m going to do whatever I can to be ready day one.”

The Falcons did not pick Penix because they are concerned about Cousins’ return from an Achilles injury, but there is an insurance element to the pick, Morris acknowledged. Cousins will be 36 when the season begins and already has 12 years of football and more than 5,000 passing attempts in his rearview mirror.

“I wish we all could play forever, but we can’t,” Morris said. “If things are going right, things are going right and we’ll be happy in Atlanta. We’ll move forward to Kirk and see what happens, but we have five years before we have to make those decisions.”

Statistically, guarding against the possibility of bad outcomes at the quarterback position is the right move, said Kevin Cole, formerly a data scientist at Pro Football Focus who now runs the Unexpected Points Substack. Overall, the data suggests NFL teams should spend more resources than they do on the backup quarterback position, Cole said.

“There are lots of different ways things can play out over the next year or two, and it’s about, ‘How are we going to put ourselves in a position to hit a great outcome in the future?’ A lot of times that is, ‘Let’s figure out more ways we could get a really good quarterback outcome out of this.’”

The general reaction to Atlanta’s pick has been much less favorable. The Athletic analysts gave the pick a C. The Ringer: D-minus. ESPN’s Mel Kiper called it “shocking.” (The important review of the pick for the sake of Fontenot and Morris came from Blank, who was fully supportive, the GM said.) The selection spawned so much attention throughout the league that Morris joked he felt like Taylor Swift.

“I guess that makes Terry (Travis) Kelce,” he quipped.

Fontenot rolled his eyes at that comparison but said he was leaving the Falcons’ draft feeling fully confident in the Penix pick.

“If you had told me when we were sitting there in January wondering who was going to be our quarterback … that we were going to have Kirk Cousins for right now and Michael Penix for the future, I would have told you it was a pipe dream,” Fontenot said. “This is exciting. We are very excited. It’s the most important position in pro sports, and to feel this good about right now, we couldn’t be more excited.”

(Top photos of Kirk Cousins and Michael Penix Jr.: Stephen Maturen / Getty Images; Dale Zanine / USA Today)