Michael Penix: “Physically, I got a good ACL… Mentally, do I trust it?”

The Falcons quarterback competition really isn’t a competition until Michael Penix Jr. is cleared for 11-on-11 work. So far, he’s been working with the team in 7-on-7s, but he’s said it might be a few more weeks until he’s a full go — meaning it’s all but guaranteed Tua Tagovailoa will be the starter when the Falcons take the field against the Steelers in Week 1.

Penix taking things more slowly than some others coming back from similar injuries shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. This is already the third torn ACL of his football career, and while physically he might be at 100%, the mental barrier for someone who’s dealt with that many injuries is a much harder one to clear — something he explained in a recent interview with Cam Newton.

“I want to start,” Penix said. “I want to start the first game of the season. But at the end of the day, it’s about how I feel. So there’s not really a timeframe on it…

“A lot of it is mental. Physically, I got a good ACL. The doctors did what they needed to do. I can go out there and do anything. But mentally, you hesitate, and it’s like do I trust it?”

My experience in the medical field may be lacking, but the way Penix’s injury was being discussed through the media never made a lot of sense. If he can move around and do everything in 7-on-7s, there shouldn’t be much structural concern left with the knee.

This interview brings everything full circle. There’s nothing wrong with Penix physically. He’s just not there mentally yet — not to the point where he can play without thinking about it. And that can be read as both a positive and a negative.

The good news is he’s healthy. The bad news is we’re talking about a player who’s dealt with a slew of major injuries this early in his career, and the mental barriers that come with that aren’t easy to overcome.

However, what Penix is describing is completely normal, and anyone who’s torn an ACL will tell you the same. Physical clearance and psychological clearance are two entirely different finish lines. And Penix’s situation is uniquely difficult. This isn’t a guy processing one bad break. He tore his ACL twice at Indiana before this one. When you’ve had your knees give out on you three separate times, “do I trust it?” isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition. His body has taught him a lesson that his doctors can’t simply un-teach with a clean MRI.

That matters for a quarterback more than most positions. A hesitant quarterback is a compromised quarterback. If Penix is thinking about his leg instead of his second read, if he’s bailing from clean pockets or hitching before he steps into a throw, the physical talent doesn’t translate.

What does it mean for Atlanta? In the short term, it settles the quarterback question — Tua starts, and probably holds the job for a while. But the longer implication is murkier. The Falcons still don’t know what they have in Penix, and every week he spends in 7-on-7s is another week they don’t find out. At some point this organization has to make a franchise-altering decision about whether he’s the guy, and they’re currently gathering almost no information to base it on.

There’s a version of this that works out. Penix gets fully cleared, spends a few weeks getting his confidence back in practice, and by midseason he’s playing free. That’s the outcome the Falcons need, and it’s not unrealistic — plenty of players cross that mental threshold once they take a hit and get up fine.

But there’s also a version where this lingers. Where the hesitation never fully leaves, and Atlanta finds itself back at square one at the most important position on the field.

Either way, Penix deserves credit for the honesty. Plenty of players in his position would have said all the right things and pushed to be out there Week 1 regardless of how they felt. He didn’t, and given his injury history, it’s probably the smarter approach. It just doesn’t make the Falcons’ situation any clearer.

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(Photo by Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire)