Despite a disappointing and injury-shortened campaign, Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr. is confident the team is on the cusp of a turnaround. In 2025, Penix struggled with accuracy early in the season before suffering his third ACL tear, which ended his campaign. Now, even though his future as Atlanta’s QB1 remains uncertain, Penix Jr. remains confident that his team has the pieces needed to return to the playoffs, and maybe even make a Super Bowl run.

“Yeah, it’s no doubt at all it’s going to get done guaranteed, there’s no doubt,” Michael Penix Jr. said recently during an interview on Jon Gruden’s Barstool.

The Falcons haven’t reached the Super Bowl since 2017, when the New England Patriots defeated them 34-28 in overtime. Atlanta has also endured an eight-year playoff drought, but Michael Penix Jr. believes that last season showed signs that the team might be closer than the record suggests. 

The Falcons finished the 2025 season with four straight wins and an 8-9 record, tied for first place in the NFC South alongside the Carolina Panthers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While the season didn’t lead to the playoffs, there were certainly flashes of promise throughout the year as the Falcons recorded impressive wins against playoff teams such as the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Rams.

One of the most impressive wins for the Falcons came in the Week 17 game against the Rams. In that game, Falcons’ running back Bijan Robinson delivered a historic 93-yard touchdown run and set the Falcons’ record for most scrimmage yards in a single season. Thanks to Robinson’s explosive performance, the Falcons jumped out to a 21-0 halftime lead. But the game also reflected one of Atlanta’s biggest problems last year: closing out tight contests.

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The Rams mounted a comeback and erased the 21-point deficit in the third quarter of the game. Still, the Falcons managed to escape with a win after their kicker Zane Gonzalez drilled a 51-yard field goal with just 21 seconds left in the game, securing a 27-24 victory. But the Falcons didn’t always finish games that way in the 2025 season.

Take the Week 13 matchup against the New York Jets, which the Falcons lost 27-24 after a series of costly mistakes across all phases of the game. The Falcons missed a 50-yard field goal, muffed a kickoff, and gave up an 83-yard kick return after taking a 24-17 lead in the fourth quarter. By that point in the season, Atlanta had already blown fourth-quarter leads three different times.

The Falcons also dropped back-to-back overtime games to the Colts and Panthers in Weeks 10 and 11, losing by a combined nine points. Even the Falcons’ Week 9 loss to the Patriots came down to a single point. But according to Michael Penix Jr., those close defeats proved that his team isn’t far from competing in the Super Bowl.

“We’re real close,” Penix further added. “You look at a lot of our games, we lost a lot of games by less than a touchdown. We’ve got to find ways to win those close games. It’s tough to win in the league. It’s very hard to win it in the league. But at the same time, we got the team to do it. We got the guys to do it. And we just got to come together and figure it out.”

However, closing games isn’t the only challenge Atlanta must address this offseason. The Falcons also face uncertainty at the most important position on the field: quarterback. Atlanta appears to be preparing to move on from veteran QB Kirk Cousins, who played 10 games during the 2025 season to throw for 1,721 yards, 10 touchdowns, and five interceptions.

Meanwhile, Penix opened the 2025 season as Atlanta’s starter after beating Cousins for the job. Penix then started nine games and threw for 1,982 yards with 9 touchdowns and three interceptions. Still, injuries have limited Penix’s availability over the past two seasons as he has appeared in only 14 games and holds a 4-8 record as a starter. So, for now, Penix’s main priority isn’t proving doubters wrong.

“Obviously, right now I got get healthy,” Penix said. “Get my body to where it’s metal. Where it’s unbreakable and stuff like that.”

Michael Penix Jr. is currently recovering from the left knee injury he suffered during Atlanta’s Week 11 loss to the Carolina Panthers. The team placed him on injured reserve soon afterward, forcing Cousins to take over. Penix eventually underwent season-ending surgery to repair a partially torn ACL.

But getting healthy is only half the battle. Penix knows that for the Falcons to take the next step, the entire offense must address the critical errors that plagued them last season

Michael Penix Jr. points out the Falcons’ offensive errors from last season 

The former leadership group in Atlanta, consisting of head coach Raheem Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot, was fully committed to Michael Penix Jr. as the Falcons’ starting quarterback. However, a new front office, led by HC Kevin Stefanski, GM Ian Cunningham, and President of Football Operations Matt Ryan, may not share that same commitment to the young quarterback.

So far, the Falcons haven’t publicly confirmed whether Penix will enter the 2026 season as the team’s QB1, and with that uncertainty lingering, Penix understands he must improve specific aspects of his game. But in his recent interview with Jon Gruden, Penix also talked about the steps he plans to take to elevate the Falcons’ offense next season.

“Just time on task with the guys, and obviously, with a new system coming in, just figuring that out, learning that new offense, and just trying to figure out how I’m going to be successful in it,” Penix said. “Which I know I will be, and everybody else around us. I would say the part of the game that I feel like kind of slowed us down last year was just converting on big downs and always being in third and long, second and long, just getting in those drop-back situations.”

“But just being effective on first and second down, finding ways to do that, and I feel like we’ll be in a good spot,” Penix concluded.

Penix’s analysis highlights a major weakness from last season. Take, for example, Atlanta’s Week 7 matchup against the San Francisco 49ers. In that game, the Falcons generated only six plays longer than 15 yards and averaged just 3.1 yards per carry on the ground. Penix completed 21 of 38 passes, but many of his completions were short of the sticks, failing to move the chains on critical downs.

Without explosive plays, the Falcons had to constantly face difficult third- and fourth-down situations. But the Falcons could only convert 45% of their third downs, and failed to convert a single fourth-down attempt. Penix pointed to the team’s inability to stay on the field, a problem that snowballed as the season wore on. After a respectable start that saw them converting 42% of third downs, the offense cratered, falling to a league-worst 22% during a critical mid-season stretch.

By the end of the season, the Falcons ranked 30th in third-down conversions at 33.3%. Atlanta wrapped up the season ranked 14th in total yards, averaging 333 yards per game. Still, Penix’s optimism to turn things around with this offense may not be unrealistic.

History has shown that rapid turnarounds are possible in the NFL, and a good example is the St. Louis Rams in 1999. In 1998, the Rams finished with a 4-12 record and ranked 24th in offense, averaging only 17.8 points per game. Then the following year, the Rams revamped their system and built the league’s top-5-ranked offense. It led to a 13-3 record for the Rams, who then went on to defeat the Tennessee Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV.

Ultimately, the turnaround Penix envisions rests on his own shoulders. The question for 2026 is whether he can finally stay healthy and be the catalyst for change, or if his injury history and the team’s offensive flaws will once again prove insurmountable.