The Falcoholic
Let’s make a series of reasonable assumptions about the 2026 season. Michael Penix Jr. will be recovering from a partially torn ACL that could stretch into the summer, making it something less than a 100% lock that he’ll be healthy in time for training camp or even (in a worst case scenario) the season. Kirk Cousins will likely be gone, which we’ll touch on in this piece. With that in mind, and with the simple and justifiable wariness that will come after Penix injured his ACL, the Falcons may have to invest in a quarterback they feel comfortable starting; they will almost certainly add to the room. While we don’t know who will be coaching this team, necessarily, and what expectations will be for the season, the team is not going to roll into 2026 with, say, a recovering Penix and Easton Stick.
I want to stress up front that we don’t know enough about Penix’s injury or recovery timeline to know what the Falcons will need, and if things are at all positive, the team is going to do everything they can to stave off a quarterback controversy and give Penix a chance to show he’s the franchise player the Falcons envisioned him to be when they used a top ten pick on him in 2024. But regardless of any of that, there’s zero chance the status quo is maintained at quarterback, and the Falcons must wisely hedge against any setbacks or 2026 injuries for Penix by giving themselves an option that won’t sink the season if they have to make starts. We’ll look at some of the players the Falcons could acquire and how they might acquire them in this article; we’ll likely repeat this exercise in the spring when we have news about Penix’s recovery and free agency and the draft are looming.
Let’s get this one out of the way right now.
This seems incredibly unlikely.
Cousins is going to have an absurd $57 million cap charge in 2026 if he’s on the roster, and the Falcons can save $35 million against dead money of $22.5 million by cutting him with a post-June 1 designation. For that money to be remotely worth it, Cousins would have to play lights-out football down the stretch, get the Falcons back to respectability, and re-earn the trust of the entire Falcons organization along the way. This is a player, after all, who complained about the team’s decision to draft Michael Penix Jr., may or may not have obscured an injury suffered last year that caused his play to crater, and then spent the offseason trying to get traded or released. All of those things were well within his rights, but it doesn’t mean the Falcons or this fanbase had to like them.
Cousins will be 37 years old after this season and has played poorly in his fill-in stints thus far in 2025. We’re talking about a remarkable turnaround to even make the Falcons consider this,...
