The team’s starter and top backup aren’t playing Friday, and they’re unlikely to be alone.
Raheem Morris has made it clear that he is not a fan of playing starters often, or really at all, in preseason. That’s a controversial approach, but one that’s becoming increasingly common as teams like the Atlanta Falcons, Los Angeles Rams, and Detroit Lions elect to avoid injury risk and prioritize practices and scrimmages to get their starters reps; in 2023, 14 teams parked their starting quarterbacks for the first two preseason games and eight additional teams gave their starters fewer than 10 snaps.
Given that recent history and what Morris did in 2024, it’s no great surprise to learn Michael Penix and Kirk Cousins will not be taking the field on Friday for the team’s preseason opener against the Detroit Lions. Instead, you should expect Easton Stick and Emory Jones to each get about a half of football against Detroit, which will also likely be rolling out the deep backups.
Raheem Morris says Michael Penix Jr. and Kirk Cousins will not play this Friday for the #Falcons in their first preseason game.
— Miles Garrett (@MilesGarrettTV) August 4, 2025
This makes for a duller preseason product and raises fresh anxiety about how the team will look early on, especially with Penix being relatively new as an NFL starter. The team’s hope is that they’ll get key starters to the regular season in good health and that the, say, 10-12 snaps Penix might get in the average preseason game is far less important than the consistent day-in, day-out work of the summer. That’s probably fair, but in such a critical year, it’ll be difficult for fans not to scrutinize how the offense looks early on, especially because I’d bet my bottom dollar that we’re not going to see many starters out there at all on Friday.
The opportunity is now there for reserves to make their cases in a major way, of course. The Falcons will almost certainly keep a third quarterback on the practice squad, and Stick and Jones have both had their moments in practice that they’ll badly want to transfer to live game action. That battle—and battles like RB3, WR5/6, TE3, and frankly every deep reserve role on the defense—will be settled in the long slogs that these three upcoming preseason games represent.
A slow start to the 2025 season will expose Morris and the Falcons to a fresh wave of preseason-related criticism, but don’t expect Morris to budge regardless. We’ll see if we see Penix and Cousins at all in preseason, or if this figures to be the Stick and Jones show.