FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — The Atlanta Falcons would love to turn the page to Michael Penix Jr. as quickly as possible. It’s understandable considering the potential of the young quarterback is the only thing they have to salve the sting of another disappointing season.
On Thursday, though, the message was simply a mea culpa, an unspoken admission that a team that missed the playoffs for a seventh straight season owes some apologies.
“I’ll start out by saying how disappointed we are in the results of the season,” general manager Terry Fontenot said as he took the podium for his season-ending news conference. “A lot of people put a lot of work into this, so when this is what the result is, nobody is happy about that. Most importantly, we are disappointed for our fans. They deserve better. We understand at this point the words don’t mean anything. We have to speak with our results and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The results this year said, “Same ol’ Falcons.” They finished 8-9 and their playoff drought is the third-longest active one in the NFL. They have posted seven straight losing seasons, second worst only to the Jets’ nine, and lost six of their final eight games to give away a two-game lead in the NFC South and waste what at one point was a 95 percent chance to make the playoffs, according to The Athletic’s statistical models.
It’s been bad enough that even Fontenot’s appearance on Thursday was not a given until he stepped to the podium. Hired in 2021 along with head coach Arthur Smith, who was fired last year, Fontenot has presided over a 29-39 team. He chooses not to focus on his job security, he said, but he can understand why others might.
“I want to be real clear that we haven’t done a good enough job. I haven’t done a good enough job,” he said. “We haven’t won enough. It starts with me. That’s my job to make this team a consistent winner.”
He was trying to do that, he said, when he signed Kirk Cousins to a four-year deal in free agency this offseason that guaranteed the first two seasons at a $90 million salary. Penix was supposed to be a backup plan that wouldn’t go into effect until at least 2026.
“We gave Kirk Cousins two years guaranteed. When you do that, you expect to get high-level quarterback play for two seasons,” Fontenot said. “Nobody was happy to make the switch at that time. We wanted to get that high-level quarterback play. When that did not happen, we had to accelerate that plan and go to Mike earlier.”
The Falcons believe they have a franchise quarterback in Michael Penix Jr., but they have a lot of work to do after their seventh straight losing season. (Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
Cousins lasted only 14 starts. He was benched after a five-game stretch in which he threw nine interceptions and one touchdown pass and the Falcons lost four times to cough up the division lead. The Falcons still are struggling to figure out how it went so wrong.
“We saw some really good things from him, and then it just dropped to the point where we had to make a change,” Fontenot said. “He was healthy. It was just the play just wasn’t there.”
Head coach Raheem Morris said he does not regret giving Cousins so long to get out of his slump.
“It’s never like a regret thing. You have to make the decisions when you think they’re right,” Morris said. “When the decision was made is when I felt like the team played really well outside of our quarterback position. You have to make those decisions. I made the decision when I did to give us the best chance to win. That was the decision at the time.”
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Since Fontenot was hired, Atlanta has seen six quarterbacks start at least three games (Matt Ryan, Marcus Mariota, Desmond Ridder, Taylor Heinicke, Cousins and Penix). Only the Panthers, Browns and Steelers can match that number and no one in the league can top it over the last four seasons.
Stopping that cycle is the reason Falcons owner Arthur Blank signed off on selecting Penix with the No. 8 pick in April despite having already invested so much in Cousins
“I’m very sensitive on behalf of our fan base on not having a period of time post-Kirk Cousins to have a gap again between having that kind of franchise quarterback and being in the spin cycle and not being able to get out,” Blank said in August.
Fontenot emphasized Thursday that the Falcons are not in the post-Kirk Cousins era yet. They are “very comfortable” keeping Cousins as the backup quarterback in 2025, he said, but that’s most likely a message to other teams around the league to start sending in trade offers rather than expecting Cousins to be released.
“We will take those things as they come,” Fontenot said about the possibility of a trade. “Everyone would have to be good with it, his camp, us, the other team. There are a lot of layers to that, and we’ll take those as they come.”
The Falcons will owe Cousins a $10 million roster bonus if he is still on the team on March 17. If the Falcons can find a trade partner acceptable to Cousins, who has a no-trade clause, they could get his cap hit for next season down to $37.5 million. If he plays for Atlanta, he’ll have a $40 million cap hit. If he is released with a pre-June 1 designation, the Falcons would have $65 million of dead money on next year’s salary cap. If he’s released with a post-June 1 designation, they could break that dead cap hit into two chunks — $40 million in 2025 and $25 million in 2026.
“We knew going into last offseason we had to fix the quarterback position,” Fontenot said. “We wanted to bring in a high-level quarterback that could help us win right now, and when you look at Kirk Cousins and what he has done and the things he was, we believed he could be an effective quarterback for us right now.”
Morris, who also was a proponent of adding Cousins last offseason, said he is excited to continue his working relationship with Fontenot.
“This year was a big-time learning curve for Terry and I, and I thought it couldn’t have gone better with the communication, the clarity, his tireless work ethic,” Morris said. “For me and Terry, this thing is just getting started. I love working with him. I love being with him. Terry and I have a great working relationship. We are moving forward together.”
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If Atlanta’s on-field product doesn’t improve next year, they probably won’t be for long, though.
“There’s one stat that matters, wins and losses, so we have to figure out those specific things that we need to do differently,” Fontenot said. “This is a critical offseason for all of us. We all understand that.”
Fontenot didn’t offer any examples of what those things might be, saying the team’s self-evaluation process is just beginning.
“I can sit here and say anything I want, the words really don’t mean anything,” he said. “We have to speak with our results.”
(Top photo of Terry Fontenot: Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
