Photo by Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsWhoever Starts Sunday Starts Thursday
Tuesday gave the Falcons two club documents with two different quarterbacks on top and no decision. The one being made today covers Carolina on Sunday and Green Bay four days later.
Kevin Stefanski is not picking Sunday's quarterback today. He is picking Sunday's and Thursday's, and Tuesday's headlines counted one.
Tuesday produced two club documents with two different quarterbacks on top. Josh Kendall of The Athletic posted Tuesday morning that the media advisory had gone from "Starting QB press conference" to "QB Cooper Rush press conference." By afternoon the club's unofficial Week 2 depth chart had Tua Tagovailoa first, Rush second, and called the quarterbacks unchanged from Week 1. In between, Steve Wyche of NFL Network checked with the team and was told it "listed Rush based on no new information." His word for Rush: "placeholder."
Four outlets — Pro Football Talk, Heavy, Yardbarker and The Falcoholic — read a Sunday starter out of the edit anyway. Stefanski, Monday: "I really don't have an update yet."
None of that is the decision. The decision is who takes the first-team snaps today.
The calendar: Carolina at Atlanta, Sunday, Sept 20. Atlanta at Green Bay, Thursday, Sept 24, four days later. New Orleans, Monday, Oct 5, eleven days after that.
Nobody installs a different quarterback on a short week. That is my read, not a report. Four days is not an install.
Whoever starts Sunday starts Thursday. The call resolves at Lambeau on Sept 24 and gets graded here Sept 25.
Ian Rapoport's window for Michael Penix Jr., via Bleacher Report, was "about Week 2 or 3." Sunday or Thursday. The insider's window and the short week are the same two games. The eleven days after Green Bay are the first place a different name fits, and that is my calendar, not the club's.
Miles wrote Tuesday that Wednesday's report "names participation, not a starter." When the club puts a name on it, read it twice: once for Carolina, once for Lambeau.
The Tilt
Atlanta's Sunday starter is its Thursday starter at Lambeau, whoever Stefanski names today.
— Dex Ponce
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The Unit Came From the Reporters
Wednesday's report lists Michael Penix Jr. and Cooper Rush as full participants and stops there; the first-team rep split came from the club's own writer, ESPN and the AJC, and the head coach, asked before practice which unit Penix was on, would not say. That is new information about the quarterback question, and it is not a decision.
The Window Is on Paper. The Intent Is Not.
On August 30 the Falcons put four quarterbacks on the 53 and nine players on reserve lists, and Michael Penix was among the four. Half of what an insider said Monday about the club's plan for him was already in that document; the other half, nobody in the building has said.
The Hedge Is the Plan Now
The Falcons hedged Da'Shawn Hand on cut-down day, trading for Gervon Dexter Sr. while Hand had not returned to practice. Monday turned that hedge into the entire interior plan, and the club has named nobody.