Michael Penix, Jayden Daniels and Other Babes in Toyland
In which your author, a consummate professional, saves all his whining about the Eagles loss until about 3,000 words in.
In this overstuffed Christmas Eve-Eve Week 16 edition of Walkthrough:
The Minnesota Vikings won another important game. Let’s nitpick them!
Kenny Pickett proves that he is no Nick Foles after Jalen Hurts suffers a concussion.
Jayden Daniels throws five touchdown passes. Let’s criticize the officiating!
Bryce Young grows two sizes plus one while knocking the Cardinals out of the playoffs.
Drake Maye and the Patriots throw a scare into the sloppy Bills.
The Ravens get a big box of regression to the mean for Christmas.
The Chiefs trap C.J. Stroud in a third-and-forever nightmare.
And much more!
But first …
Michael Penix’s Shiny New Year
The Atlanta Falcons entered Week 16 one miscue away from blowing a 28-3 season.
The Falcons were custom-built, at considerable expense, to coast to victory in the NFC South. They beat the Eagles and threw a scare into the Chiefs early in the year. They swept the Buccaneers, their toughest divisional rivals. They rose to 6-3 after beating the Cowboys in Week 9: literal halftime of the NFL season.
The Falcons then dramatically swooned for a month as only they can.
The explanation for their collapse is baked into the second sentence of the last paragraph. The Falcons were custom-built to coast to victory in the NFC South. Not the Super Bowl. Not the conference. The Falcons assembled a Daydream Team of Kirk Cousins, Darnell Mooney, Mathew Judon and other C+ listers in an effort to triumph in the NFL’s lowliest division. It’s a tale as old as time: set meager goals, fall short of them and end up face-down in a steaming pile of your own shame.
The Falcons even hedged their 2024 bet by drafting Michael Penix as Cousins’ heir apparent/challenger/purchase-protection insurance. That hedging may have contributed to the franchise’s self-sabotage: Byron Murphy, Laitu Latu, Jared Verse or Chop Robinson could have provided a wisp of desperately-needed pass rush throughout the year, and provoking Cousins skepticism just weeks after he arrived was almost guaranteed to stir up controversy at the first sign of a slump.
In fairness to the Falcons, they waited until about the fourth sign of a Cousins slump before switching to Plan B.
Penix made an impressive starting debut in Sunday’s 34-7 rout of the Giants in Atlanta: 202 yards on 18-of-27 passing; one interception with extenuating circumstances.
The choice of opponent indicates that Raheem Morris understood the optics of his decision. The Giants are patsies, just as the Raiders were supposed to be when the Cousins-led Falcons squeaked out a victory last Monday night. Morris wasn’t giving Cousins another chance for a narrow find-a-way win that would mask the team’s deeper issues. He wanted Penix to get the kind of easy victory in front of a home crowd that would shovel dirt on any but Kirk gives them the best chance to reach the playoffs debate.
Oh, it wasn’t actually easy at first. Nothing the Falcons do, besides giving up gift-wrapped opportunities, is ever easy. Receivers dropped two of Penix’s passes on his opening drive, which ended with a missed field goal. Penix fired an accurate pass to Kyle Pitts at the goal line just before halftime, but the ever-unreliable fantasy scourge batted the ball straight to defender Cor’Dale Flott.
Not everyone on the Falcons was determined to sink to a new low on Sunday, however. Bijan Robinson was his usual yardage-munching self. Penix found Bijan, Darnell Mooney and Drake London with accurate strikes for key third-down conversions when the game was still close. Most importantly, Jessie Bates and Judon, big-name veterans on a disappointing defense that has hidden in Cousins’ criticism shadow, scored defensive touchdowns on a pick-6 (Bates) and a fumble recovery (Judon).
Were Bates and Judon energized by Penix’s arrival? Did Cousins’ benching make them fear for their own job security? It’s more likely that the the Falcons defense benefited from the fact that the Giants are so dreadful that they can no longer be considered Blue Rutgers: they are more like Blue Rowan these days.