After selecting Michael Penix Jr. at No. 8 overall to be the heir apparent to Kirk Cousins, the Falcons have elected to limit the rookie quarterback’s playing time in the preseason.
Penix was on the field for 24 snaps in the preseason opener against Miami, completing 9-of-16 passes for 104 yards. But he did not play over the weekend against the Ravens and head coach Raheem Morris said he doesn’t plan on playing Penix in Friday’s preseason finale against the Jaguars either.
Morris said after Saturday’s game that Penix had shown enough to not play again in the preseason. The head coach elaborated on his reasoning during his Monday press conference.
“Michael’s role is really clear on what we want to see,” Morris said. “We had a chance to get him two really hard practices versus the Dolphins, which I value just as much as these games. And I got a chance to get him out there versus the Dolphins and go out there and all these things about mitigating injuries. And you can’t affect them all. You can’t help them all, but it’s certainly a player that I could, particularly with our scrimmage coming up.
“In a normal year, you’d like to get four of those joint practices to be able to get those evaluations done, to be able to mitigate injury. I’ve been able to simulate three with other people, getting him a little bit of game work action. I think it was 25 or so plays. And within those practices, we’re able to get a lot more than that. And I’ll be able to get a nice look at him on Wednesday [in our scrimmage] and some of the problems and the things that we want to see if he can actually grasp and hold onto a little bit more from our standpoint, which he’s done a great job of getting better throughout this process. So it’ll be a really similar look on how we went about our process this week and how we approach this next preseason game.”
As a follow-up, Morris was asked if not playing Penix was solely about injury prevention and the head coach noted that the rookie has been able to take plenty of reps without really taking them away from Cousins.
“And it’s been awesome,” Morris said. “I don’t see that varying at all in his developmental plan, even moving into the season. Because he’ll be able to have 100 percent of the reps versus our defense [as the scout-team QB]. And he’s getting, I don’t know how many reps he’s got versus our starting defense now, but he’s got a huge amount of reps versus our starting defense. And I feel really good about where he’s going and what he’s going to develop.
“And if I felt that way, I could play him a little bit more if I needed something else. But I don’t feel that way. And I don’t think any of the people that I would talk to in that circle of trust would feel that way. Or we’d be playing him a little bit more, but we don’t feel like we need to.”
As for this weekend’s game, Morris said the quarterback reps will look similar — which means Taylor Heinicke and John Paddock will be on the field at signal-caller.