00:00Bottom line is very rarely is it a clean slate,
00:04and it certainly has not been a clean slate for Michael Penix.
00:08Well, I mean, I think part of that two-stake is just the situation they put him in
00:12and Kirk Cousins at the time.
00:14I mean, everybody talked about Kirk Cousins.
00:16He was the guy that they signed first in free agency,
00:18and then the Falcons several weeks later turned around
00:21and drafted Michael Penix with the No. 8 overall pick
00:25when a lot of people were talking about him being top of the second round.
00:28That's how it starts, in tumults, right out of the gate.
00:30Correct.
00:31By the way, Caleb Williams, of course.
00:34Caleb Williams was the No. 1 pick.
00:38But everyone talked about what it did to Cousins.
00:41No one really talked about what it did for Penix
00:43because for Penix, the expectations were,
00:46well, he's going to learn under Kirk Cousins.
00:48That was the way it was.
00:49And then all of a sudden, Kirk Cousins is injured,
00:52doesn't really tell anybody that he's injured.
00:54You're wondering what's going on, and then all of a sudden,
00:56lo and behold, Michael Penix is under center.
00:59And he had his opportunity.
01:01Yeah, they had three games.
01:02They had to make the playoffs.
01:03That Sunday night game against the Commanders was,
01:06I felt like, a make-or-break game.
01:08He could have gotten the Falcons into the playoffs
01:10with that game and threw the interception late.
01:12He also threw a touchdown with no time left.
01:15Absolutely.
01:15So, listen, I just feel like he's got a lot to overcome,
01:20and not just here in Atlanta now that he's a backup.
01:23But listen to him on the Cam Newton podcast yesterday.
01:27It's great stuff.
01:27He sits with Cam Newton, and again,
01:30this wasn't a press conference where they're peppering him
01:34with questions and he's got 10 minutes.
01:36This was a thoughtful time to be sitting there,
01:40and here he is essentially telling you that
01:42one of his biggest challenges is going to be the mental part
01:46and feeling ready.
01:50And do you see yourself,
01:52and what time frame would not just the doctor's prognosis,
01:56but for you to give yourself the ability to come back this season?
02:02Is it the first three games, four games?
02:05Do you start the season?
02:07Like, what does that process look like for you?
02:08Yeah, I mean, I feel like I want to start.
02:11I want to start the first game, first game of the season,
02:13you know, but at the end of the day, it's about how I feel.
02:15So it's like, it's not really a time frame on it.
02:18It's more like, it's like some small, like growing pains
02:21that, you know, I go through that.
02:22I got to make sure, you know, I'm at 100% to where it's like,
02:25when I get out there, I don't want to be thinking about it.
02:28Because like a lot of it is mental, you know, it's like, all right.
02:31Yeah, it's like, physically, I got a good ACL.
02:33The doctor, they deal with what they got to do.
02:35I can go out there and do anything.
02:36But mentally, you hesitate.
02:38And it's like, and do I trust it?
02:41Physically, I have a 100% ACL.
02:44This is a mental concern.
02:46It's a guy that has four seasons cut short by injury, four.
02:50Three of them were ACLs.
02:52He is in his mid-20s, 26.
02:55Yeah, he's older.
02:56He's older, yeah.
02:57And now he's telling you, and back to what I'm saying,
02:59it's going to be hard right now to think of Michael Penix
03:01having his best days in Atlanta, given everything that he is up against.
03:07He also talked about not even knowing until surgery
03:09that it was ACL number three.
03:12No, I didn't.
03:13Because it didn't feel like the last two.
03:15It didn't feel like the last two.
03:16It was crazy.
03:17It was a crazy story.
03:18It was like, I got MRI testing and everything.
03:20And it's like, they're looking at the MRI.
03:22They're like, okay, it didn't look like I tore my ACL and MRI.
03:25These doctors looking at it.
03:27And then like, I go into surgery.
03:28Because like, I'm talking to my doctor that I did surgery with.
03:31And he's like, all right, let's do the surgery.
03:33I'll go in there and see what's going on.
03:34So like, really, the surgery was to go see what was going on.
03:37So you didn't even know.
03:38You know you're about to go under the knife, but I don't know what's going on.
03:40So I wake up out of surgery and the doctor's like, you did tell your ACL.
03:46So I'm like, okay, well, I got this rehab to do all over again.
03:50You know, but it's crazy because like looking at MRIs,
03:53it didn't look like a normal ACL tear.
03:55Well, that's neither here nor there.
03:57You know what I found more fascinating than anything in listening to this
04:00was Cam talking about how it kind of telling Penix, take your time.
04:06Here is Cam addressing exactly what you're saying.
04:08I'm telling you, because if you come back and in that, that,
04:12that conscious in your mind, where you're seeing ghosts, feeling ghosts.
04:18Yeah.
04:18It's like, bro, I don't feel like myself.
04:19Yeah.
04:20That's going to have a trickle down effect more so than that leg would ever do.
04:25Yeah.
04:25So if you're not a hundred percent confident.
04:28Yeah.
04:29Hell no.
04:30Yeah.
04:31No, that's real.
04:31You know what I'm saying?
04:32That's real.
04:33And that's, that's the mindset I have right now going into it.
04:35Like, cause I know, cause I, I look back at like my career.
04:39So like in 2020, in 2020, my second ACL tear,
04:44I came back in that 2021 season and I wasn't the same.
04:49It was like everything I was doing, I was thinking about it.
04:51It was crazy.
04:52Cause like I had confidence in the off season.
04:54They're like, the doctor's like, okay, you're good.
04:56If you feel good, you can play.
04:57I get a call the week of the first game from the doctor.
05:01Hey, I'm just letting you know, I didn't clear you, but if you feel good,
05:04you can play.
05:05But I'm just like, before camp, you just told me I was good.
05:10Well, there's a lot to unpack there.
05:13None of it is good.
05:14No, really?
05:15None of it is good.
05:16So in his head, he rehabbed in 20, played in 21 and said he never felt good.
05:25So in the back of his mind, his 25 rehab into 26, he's saying, oh, I may be cleared,
05:32but I don't really feel the same.
05:33This is the third time he's going through this process.
05:36If anybody knows about it, he certainly does.
05:40And he knows the fears that he has, the fears that he previously had.
05:43And now the fears that he certainly has to have the doubts because look, he never, he
05:48didn't feel ready after some of it.
05:50Now he says he feels great, but the doubts got to be in the back of his mind.
05:53Yeah.
05:53I don't know.
05:54I don't know.
05:54I heard him say he feels great.
05:56I heard him say that he's medically cleared to do a lot.
05:59Did he say he feels great?
06:00I mean, maybe, uh, you know, whatever that that's semantics.
06:03What, what we did hear him say is that mentally he is not there.
06:07And then he goes deeper, which is, yeah, I thought I was better other times.
06:12I realized I couldn't do the same things and it took me years to start feeling comfortable
06:16again.
06:16This is not a guy that's trying to come back from one.
06:19You're coming back from three.
06:20And again, is he a great kid?
06:23Absolutely.
06:23If I heard more and more that there's nobody you want to root for more vociferously than,
06:29uh, Michael Penix Jr.
06:30Absolutely.
06:31Would it be a great story?
06:32And the city of Atlanta and have him under center and kind of play with that kind of
06:36reckless, uh, you know, throwing it all over the way he did at Washington when he had one
06:41of the great playoff games in history.
06:42I think it was Texas.
06:43They beat and he lit them up.
06:45He beat Oregon twice and Bo Nix.
06:46Could he be that guy in Atlanta and be a star?
06:49He could do that.
06:50But we are, uh, I'm playing the percentages here and the percentages here.
06:54You're already a backup.
06:55You're already skittish.
06:57You've already had three ACLs.
06:59You're already at the back end of the draft class, right?
07:03And, um, I don't know what his career is going to be.
07:05It'll be fascinating for us to sit here in five years, Mitch, and go, wow, look at Michael
07:10Penix.
07:11He's running around there in Arizona, or he's taken over, uh, for the Rams because, you
07:17know, it didn't work out with their first round of this year.
07:19Who knows?
07:20Is he in Atlanta in two years?
07:22It's like, Hey, remember we worried about Michael Penix Jr.
07:24I don't see him under center as the star of the Falcons.
07:28No, I don't see it.
07:28Not here.
07:29Certainly.
07:29And I don't, I listen, I love the honesty.
07:32Great job by Cam Newton.
07:33I love all of it, but listen to the guy, man.
07:37Listen to him.
07:38And from Cam's context, by the way, totally different.
07:41Cam was the guy.
07:43He talked about wanting to come back earlier because Kyle Allen was playing good and that
07:48he felt like he needed to get back in there.
07:50And for Penix, that's not the situation.
07:52Jason Penix is battling for a job.
07:54It's not his.
07:55Cam Newton was the most physically impressive quarterback that maybe has ever been under
08:00center in NFL history of all time.
08:02Nobody's ever looked like him, run like him, thrown like him, and, and had that style of
08:08quarterback.
08:08Right.
08:09His physicality, you know, not that he couldn't throw, but he wasn't the most accurate passer,
08:14but man, was he a specimen, right?
08:16MVP of the league.
08:17They're not the same.
08:18They are not the same.
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