Surprise! The Falcons are a completely different team with Michael Penix Jr.

Falcons fans were put through a humiliation ritual over the first two weeks of the NFL season, forced to watch Cooper Rush start back-to-back games and turn in arguably the worst two-game stretch from a quarterback the league has ever seen.

Rightfully so, those fans were booing early and often last Sunday during Atlanta’s 34-3 loss to the Panthers. It was sheer embarrassment for the entire organization — one that was lambasted by every media outlet in the country heading into Thursday Night Football, a game everybody predicted they would lose.

Here’s what was funny about nearly every one of these football savants from the national media, though: they had no problem calling the Falcons the worst team in the league, but almost none of them acknowledged that all of Atlanta’s struggles stemmed from one simple fact — Cooper Rush was starting at quarterback.

If any of them had taken five minutes out of their day to actually watch what the Falcons were dealing with under center instead of skimming the box score, they might have talked a little differently once it was announced that Michael Penix Jr. was set to make his season debut after tearing his ACL.

Instead, all those talking heads cracking jokes without watching a single snap got a firsthand glimpse of just how “talentless” the Falcons are — on primetime television, no less — as Atlanta swarmed the Packers in all three phases.

For the Falcons, it always starts with the ground game, and nobody was happier to see Michael Penix Jr. back in the lineup than Bijan Robinson. The mere threat of Penix’s arm — something Cooper Rush simply couldn’t provide — forces defenses to play honest, and it let Robinson get going early and often, racking up 194 yards on 29 carries with a couple of touchdowns.

In total, the Falcons piled up 242 yards on the ground, running it a whopping 41 times. The Packers? Nine carries for 17 yards.

That’s a storyline nobody wanted to touch coming into the game. Atlanta’s defensive front — despite losing big names in Jalon Walker and James Pearce Jr. — had been quietly impressive through the first two weeks, while the Packers’ offensive line has been a disastrous work in progress. It was a massive advantage in Atlanta’s favor, and it played out exactly that way. Green Bay couldn’t run it, and Jordan Love spent the night running around like a chicken with his head cut off, doing most of his damage in garbage time with the game well out of reach.

But this blowout didn’t start with a dream script. Atlanta got the ball to open the game, and after a couple of first downs, Penix tossed a dangerous ball into traffic for his first interception of the season. The jokes came flying on social media, and the Packers turned it into an early touchdown lead.

Then, around the second quarter, Penix found his rhythm — and never lost it. He went 16-for-18 the rest of the way for 234 yards and a touchdown, with Drake London hauling in 194 of those yards.

It may have been the best three-quarter stretch of Penix’s entire career. And to do it in his first game back from his third ACL injury, in front of a national audience, with nobody in his corner? As Drake London put it after the game, “He’s the definition of resiliency.”

This was among the most complete performance we’ve seen from the Falcons in nearly a decade. Even special teams — a glaring problem area a year ago — was flawless. Zach Harrison blocked a field goal. They shut down the Packers’ return game. Nick Folk bounced back from a shaky start to the season, going 2-for-2 on field goals. And Jake Bailey dropped both of his punts inside the 20.

It gets said all the time, but the NFL is the definition of a week-to-week league. What happened Thursday night won’t help the Falcons next week, just as last week’s blowout loss didn’t carry over to Green Bay. Every team is liable to get beaten badly if it doesn’t bring its A-game — something that was impossible with Cooper Rush under center. But with Michael Penix Jr. back, the Falcons announced to the world that they’re not dead yet.

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(Photo by Larry Radloff/Icon Sportswire)