said on SiriusXM NFL Radio<\/a> that his conversations with Penix have focused on attacking his rehab from the torn ACL that ended his 2025 season in November.<\/p>\n\u201cI have had the opportunity to sit with Michael and number one, how do we bring him along? You get healthy first,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cThe first thing you\u2019ve got to do is get yourself in a place where we can practice and do that. So, job number one for Michael is to keep doing exactly what he\u2019s doing. He\u2019s been in our building doing his rehab. He\u2019s in a good place right now. . . . Everybody\u2019s like, \u2018When is he going to be back?\u2019 Well, you don\u2019t know. There\u2019s ups and downs that come with that rehab space, but we feel like we\u2019re on track and in a good space with Michael right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if Penix were healthy, the Falcons might want to bring in another quarterback to compete with him. Given that he might not be cleared by Week One, the Falcons will certainly bring in another quarterback, perhaps to start ahead of Penix. But Ryan says the Falcons still believe Penix can grow as a starting quarterback.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you help him improve? Number one, it starts with surrounding him with really solid coaches,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cI\u2019m excited about [Falcons quarterbacks coach] Alex Van Pelt coming in. He\u2019s a good football coach. Coming in, you talk about the wealth of experience that he has for a young player like Michael. I think that\u2019s really good. . . . Michael does a great job. He can spin the football. We\u2019re excited about what he does and we\u2019re excited about the staff we\u2019re putting around him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now the question is how soon Penix will be cleared to return \u2014 and whether he can earn the starting job when he is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two years after the Falcons made Michael Penix the eighth overall pick in the draft, the new regime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-480732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}