In less than a season with the Atlanta Falcons, Raheem Morris is enjoying many advantages that his predecessor, Arthur Smith, never had. Above all, this means that he does not have to suffocate his tenure under a kind of albatross at the quarterback position.

The post-Matt Ryan Dead Money Falcons assembled a fantasy football team of Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson that was exciting on paper but ultimately unworkable, with a combination of Marcus Mariota and Desmond Ridder in the middle. So the next step was to throw so much money and draft capital at the quarterback position after Smith’s firing that it would obscure the fact that Atlanta was trying to build from the outside in.

Bench Kirk Cousins on Tuesday in a stunning but not really great move for rookie Michael Penix Jr. brings us one step closer to the strange crux of this situation: We’re about to find out what exactly general manager Terry Fontenot has built here and there whether a talented quarterback with a big arm can save it.

Cousins ​​was clearly not healthy. We’ve watched him struggle several times over the last few weeks to get the footwork together for various running plays. Sometimes he throws the ball toward Robinson in the backfield — a play that still works, by the way — even though the footwork of a typical Rams-inspired running game should be far more symphonic and harmonious within a network of presnap movement aids. Everything about the offense looked labored, and while many of the recent interceptions that made the case against Cousins ​​weren’t his fault (we’ll get into that further). Here) Cousins ​​has become a convenient scapegoat for a team that has used terrible means to stop the passer call from being upended by Ridder himself, now quarterback of the lowly Las Vegas Raiders.

Regardless of whether Atlanta decided not to upgrade its offense for Cousins, Cousins ​​wasn’t comfortable doing so, he was masking the exacerbation of an issue related to last season’s torn Achilles tendon, he was simply worn out by the rigors of age stricken with a winter cold or something similar In combination with the above, the organization has bought into a familiar idea that becomes less and less credible as it gets deeper: Yes, there is a good team around here somewhere – a Team capable of achieving victory Division – if only the right person could reach in there and find it.

Atlanta has a few things going in its favor. The decision to launch Penix now is runway wise. Penix faces the New York Giants, one of the worst teams in the NFL, followed by a Washington Commanders team that has a winning record but almost lost two games to the Giants and almost lost to Spencer Rattler and the New Orleans on Sunday Saints would have lost. Then Atlanta ends the season against the Carolina Panthers.

With the team’s playoff odds already pretty unlikely — the Falcons have a three-in-10 chance of making it, according to most models — he won’t have to bear the emotional burden of waste this season. And if Penix somehow wins two games that the Falcons should win, he would help the organization start the offseason with a winning record for the first time since – my goodness – 2017.

Another bonus? The dead money cost of trading Cousins ​​is offset by the fact that Penix is ​​on a rookie contract for the foreseeable future. The transition — if you can call it that — will be less awkward considering Cousins ​​will miraculously emerge again this offseason as the savior for a quarterback-desperate team. The Giants, Raiders and Tennessee Titans would all reel at the privilege of having Cousins ​​strolling around their backfield in 2025. Cousins ​​has also long been supported by the Shanahan-McVay clique.

Of course, it’s only a matter of time before criticism of Atlanta’s defenses give way to the need for consistent, competent play from this offense (not to mention the far more glaring need for a series of serves). Drafts that could bolster a defense that desperately needs pass rush help and consistency in the secondary).

Penix now enters the stage with the ability to obliterate mediocrity or underscore the processes that led Atlanta to this purgatory in the first place. Is that fair for a newbie making his first start in an unusually chaotic situation? No. But it has become clear that the Falcons are unable to point elsewhere. There is no other choice.