1 week Ago
RENTON — Michael Penix Jr. has yet to play a snap for the Atlanta Falcons this season, and likely won’t Sunday unless something happens to the team’s starting quarterback, Kirk Cousins. But the former UW standout will try to play as much of an off-field role as he can this week in helping the Falcons prepare for the Seahawks and first-year coordinator Ryan Grubb.
Penix and Grubb spent the past two seasons working together at UW, leading the Huskies to the national title game in January before each moving on to the NFL. Suffice to say, few people around could know as much about Grubb’s offense as Penix. Of course, many around the league debate how much such intel really matters with teams able to easily view multiple angles of every play their opponents run via all-22 film and also sift through pages and pages of stats, tendencies and other data.
Players also constantly change sides. But Atlanta coach Raheem Morris said the Falcons would lean on Penix for what they could, jokingly telling reporters that he had informed Grubb “’man, we got Michael Penix in the room right now. We didn't let him out for three days.
We got a light in his face shining on him, man, making him give us everything, man. We got every signal, so make sure you change every single signal.’’’ Turning serious, Morris said: “Obviously, he talks about the stuff that he knows from when he played for the guy in college and some of the mentality and things of that nature.
But, you know, everybody in national football league, he's questioning guys that played on different teams, and being able to talk about those things. (But) having the guy that he coached last year and did a heck of a job with that we got a lot of fondness for, obviously, we got a lot of respect for Grubb and what he's been doing.” In comments to SI.
com this week, Penix was quoted as saying: "As much as I love him (Grubb), I'm on the Falcons, he's on the Seahawks. So, I'm going to do whatever I can to help us win." Grubb would expect nothing less while noting he hopes to catch up with Penix along the way if possible.
"It'll be great to see Mike,’’ Grubb said. “It's been a long time and he's a great dude and has an incredible family. Michael Penix Sr.
and Takisha Penix are good people. So yeah, it'll be awesome to see them." Penix was a surprise choice as Atlanta’s selection with the eighth overall pick given that the team had just signed Cousins to a four-year deal worth up to $180 million with $90 million.
The structure of the deal makes it unrealistic the team would move on from Cousins before the 2026 season, if then. But at the time of the draft, the 36-year-old Cousins was also coming off an Achilles injury suffered last Oct. 29 and the pick of Penix was viewed as adding some insurance for the present as well as making an investment in the future.
Cousins, though, has stayed healthy, playing every snap for the Falcons and shrugging off a poor game in week one against the Steelers (155 yards, one TD, two picks in an 18-10 loss) to lead Atlanta to four wins in five games since then. He’s thrown for eight touchdowns against three interceptions in that span and led Atlanta to 100 points combined in the last three games, all Falcons wins. So for now, Penix can only watch and learn.
Cousins said during his weekly news conference this week that his relationship with Penix has “been great. ..
. the quarterback room kind of continues to just be what it's been, which is that working force where we're all kind of pulling together. And it's kind of, you almost, you don't really want to know, OK, ‘who's the person that's starting the game this week.
’ You want it to just be, we're all just in there together, kind of asking questions, talking about what we know, what we've just seen, what we're thinking, kind of causing us all to kind of sharpen our minds and get better. And that's the way it's been and will continue to be.’’ A Husky vs.
Husky matchup Maybe easy to overlook is that Sunday’s game also features a matchup of former Husky coordinators when Seattle has the ball — Grubb against former UW head coach and defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake. Lake is in his first year as Atlanta’s defensive coordinator, coming aboard after Morris was hired in late January. Lake worked at UW in varying roles from 2014-21, spending the 2020 and 21 seasons as head coach before being fired late in the 2021 season.
He spent 2022 out of football before joining the Rams last season as assistant head coach, where he worked alongside Morris, who was LAs defensive coordinator. Morris interviewed with Seattle virtually in January before pulling out of a planned in-person interview to accept the Atlanta job before the Seahawks then hired Mike Macdonald. During his weekly meeting with the media Thursday, Lake noted that Grubb did an “excellent job’’ at UW the past two years.
“His offense is highflying,’’ Lake said. “A lot of unique stuff. A lot of stuff that you can see why they were so successful in college, and now he's brought that to the NFL.
He's the No. 1 offense throwing the ball right now. I'm sure they want to balance out a little bit and try to run the ball a little bit more.
It gets really easy to do that when you have those talented running backs back there. So, we have a monster coming in here in Atlanta that we have to deal with defensively.” Lake also said he talked to Penix some this week about Grubb’s offense.
“There may have been a few questions here or there,’’ Lake said. “There may have been a few back and forths. He’s awesome.
We (he and Penix) have a really cool relationship. Just a few little questions here or there. But, you know, he's obviously busy preparing on the other side of the ball, so I didn't want to bog him down too much.
It was more confirmation of some things. But still, everyone adds wrinkles. Everything's new every single week.
It's not like we have all the secrets to the test here. We still got to go out there and do what we do and execute what we do at a high level.”.
