Photo by Joe Glorioso / All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsNobody Won This Job
Tua Tagovailoa would be the Falcons' fifth different Week 1 starter in five years. Nobody is winning the job. One man's third torn ACL is making the decision for them.
"Tua starts by default" is the most Falcons sentence of the last decade.
Not because of Tua. Because this franchise traded for a bridge quarterback on a $1.2 million deal with zero guaranteed dollars while the guy they spent the eighth overall pick on rehabbed his third ACL tear. That's not a plan. That's a series of things that happened to a football team.
Stefanski told reporters "we're not there to name a starter for Week 1." He doesn't have to. The depth chart already did -- Penix isn't even listed in the QB section. He's filed under "injured player." The competition is a fiction written by a coaching staff too polite to say the obvious out loud.
Five different Week 1 starters in five years since Matt Ryan. Mariota. Ridder. Cousins. Penix. Now Tua. The carousel doesn't stop. It just changes the music.
ESPN projects QB uncertainty extending into 2027 -- Tua's on a one-year deal with no tag prohibition, and Penix's fifth-year option decision comes due in May with insufficient data. The most likely outcome is a handoff from one to the other, but the Falcons have never made a QB transition look easy. Starter number six could still be someone else entirely.
Tell me which part I'm wrong about.
The Tilt
The Falcons haven't had a quarterback competition since Matt Ryan left -- they've had a series of accidents.
— Dex Ponce
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