Rough road made Michael Penix Jr. 'uniquely prepared' for whatever may come in Atlanta (2024)

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Michael Penix Jr. doesn’t know how long he’ll be sitting on the bench in Atlanta. He only knows he’s prepared for it.

“I’ve been through a lot,” the Falcons’ rookie quarterback said after his first professional practice.

Every player who makes an NFL roster can say that. Not everyone can say it with as much meaning as Penix, though.

“All the adversity I have been through, I feel like it has definitely built a lot of character,” he said. “I’ve been in moments where I wasn’t on the field and just waiting my turn. I’m back in that position again.”

This time, he’s in that position because of the Falcons’ plan to draft him with the No. 8 pick and stash him behind free-agent signee Kirk Cousins for a yet-to-be-determined period of time. For the last six seasons, Penix’s purgatory was imposed by an unusually cruel string of circ*mstances.

“Third-and-8 to win the division? Not a problem. You talk about perspective. His life experiences have helped him be the type of competitor that he is,” said Nick Sheridan, the University of Alabama offensive coordinator who shepherded Penix through a college career that included stops at Indiana and Washington and almost one at Tennessee.

Penix was in the high school recruiting class of 2018, the same one that included Justin Fields, who already is on his second NFL team, but Penix had to take a long road to the league.

His path was supposed to start with the Volunteers. A three-star prospect out of Tampa Bay Tech High in his hometown of Tampa, Fla., Penix made a verbal commitment to Tennessee head coach Butch Jones at the time the Volunteers had the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the country, including a pledge from quarterback Adrian Martinez, a four-star prospect who was rated the No. 7 passer in the nation.

“Michael never blinked, didn’t care, just wanted to compete,” Jones said.

Penix’s slight frame scared away many of the nation’s top colleges — in fact, it was the reason the next staff at Tennessee pulled his scholarship offer days before signing day — but Jones was convinced Penix would grow into his frame and loved everything else about the quarterback.

“He had a live arm, he was very accurate, and one of the most important things is quarterback intangibles,” Jones said. “His character from who he was as a person, his family’s character and his competitive character were off the charts. There were a lot of things that went into that evaluation.”

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day, then the Buckeyes’ offensive coordinator, saw it, too, according to Tampa Bay Tech head coach Jayson Roberts. Day watched Penix throw during a recruiting trip through Florida on a day so windy that Roberts had to hold the hat on his head to keep it from flying away while he watched, Roberts said.

“Mike went out and was just ripping the ball through the wind, just throwing dots,” Roberts said. “After the workout, I talked to coach Day for a little bit. He said, ‘I don’t have a quarterback in my quarterback room right now who could make those throws in these conditions.’”

According to Roberts, Day told Roberts that he would prefer to take Penix ahead of four-star prospect Tate Martell, but then-Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer didn’t want to harm the relationship with Martell’s Bishop Gorman High School.

Jeremy Pruitt didn’t see a future with Penix, though. After he was hired to replace Jones at Tennessee, he told the quarterback he was no longer welcome with the Volunteers.

“It was gut-wrenching the way the Tennessee thing went down,” Roberts said. “I didn’t think it was done the right way. As soon as they hired a new coach, like the very next day, they reached out to him and told him, ‘You don’t need to come on your official visit, you don’t have a scholarship anymore.’”

Penix was the 35th-rated quarterback in his high school class — good but not good enough to be comfortable without a spot just days before college football’s early signing period. However, he did have one thing going for him. The members of the 2018 Tennessee staff still believed in him.

That included Sheridan, who was a graduate assistant for the Volunteers during Penix’s recruitment. Sheridan became Indiana’s quarterbacks coach in 2017, and he stayed in touch with Penix throughout his on-again, off-again relationship with Tennessee.

“Mike is a very even-keeled person. On the surface he presented that, but I think it was a very challenging time,” Sheridan said. “On the surface, very normal, but behind the scenes, very difficult.”

The Hoosiers offered Penix a landing spot and were immediately glad they did.

“Early on at Indiana, it was clear that Mike had a future in football,” Sheridan said. “It was clear early on that, ‘This kid can play.’”

Penix immediately earned Indiana’s starting job, but then the real adversity set in.

The 2018 season ended after three games when he tore his right ACL. The 2019 season ended after seven games when he dislocated the AC joint in his right shoulder. The 2020 season ended after six games — including one in which he passed for 491 yards against Ohio State — after he tore his right ACL again. The 2021 season ended after five games because he tore the AC joint in his left shoulder.

“Tough times,” Penix says now.

Penix was named second-team All-Big Ten and his team’s MVP at Indiana, but he still left with more scars than stats.

“It was tough mentally and physically, but it definitely built that toughness in me and also taught me patience, how to view the game from a different perspective,” he said. “That helped me increase my game, as well.”

Penix wrote “A Letter to NFL GMs” in The Players’ Tribune in April, saying his long injury history should not be considered a drawback but a strength.

“He’s uniquely prepared for the ups and downs of NFL football because of what he has gone through,” Sheridan said.

In 2022, Penix transferred to Washington, where he stayed healthy and enjoyed one of the most prolific two-year runs in college football history — passing for 9,544 yards and 67 touchdowns and leading the Huskies to the national championship game in January.

“Mike’s got a different level of maturity being the leader he was on our team,” said outside linebacker Bralen Trice, who was Penix’s teammate at Washington and reunited with him in Atlanta after the Falcons picked Trice in the third round. “This dude is crazy in the books and on the iPad, just making sure he’s locked in every single day. He’s up early, up late, doing everything he needs to do to be ready.”

Penix’s injury history doesn’t bother the Falcons. Neither, obviously, does the fact they already have a starting quarterback in Cousins. They believe Penix is as close to a sure thing at quarterback as they have had a chance to draft since this front office staff was hired in 2021.

“We don’t believe in the take-a-shot (on a quarterback) business,” assistant general manager Kyle Smith said. “We have to have conviction in our minds to take that position.”

Roberts has had that conviction for nearly a decade now.

“I didn’t see (his career) taking some of the twists and turns that it took, but after about the fourth or fifth time we saw him throw the football, we knew he was a Sunday guy,” Roberts said. “I just remember the ball jumped off his hand like nobody had seen before, just being able to throw the ball from anywhere on the field and get to anywhere on the field as a 15-year-old.”

Third-year Falcons wide receiver Drake London wasn’t surprised the team took a quarterback in the first round, he said.

“He’s a freakin’ baller,” London said after his first week of practices with Penix. “That’s why we took him at that spot. We’re just happy that he’s here. He’s slinging it.”

Penix will exist in Atlanta’s locker room every day as both an example of how quickly injuries can reshape a football season and insurance against that very possibility.

“Football has a 100 percent injury rate,” London said. “You never know when your time is going to come.”

Penix will be ready whenever that time comes, he said. The people in his past believe him.

“You look at everything he has been through and no moment has been too big for him, no obstacle has been too big for him, no competitive structure has been too big for him,” Jones said. “He has the ability to really compartmentalize and really work day to day to be the best that he can. He’s always been able to be better for every obstacle that has come his way.”

(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)

Josh Kendall , a Georgia native, has been following the Falcons since Jeff Van Note was the richly bearded face of the franchise. For 20 years before joining The Athletic NFL staff, he covered football in the SEC. He also covers golf for The Athletic. Follow Josh on Twitter @JoshTheAthletic