[KSUowls]

Where I think that age matters a bit is not so much that we want him to be the QB for the next 15 years, and instead it is more about the stage of development that a guy who is already 24 years old. Jordan Love and most QB's pre-covid are 2-3 years younger than what Penix is, with 2-3 years of less experience and coaching.

The other thing that I would point out is that there is a difference in drafting Love in the 20's to have him sit a year and drafting in the top 10. Both in terms of immediate value that you expect out of a top 10 guy and what it means to be drafting top 10 vs at the end of the round. Both Rodgers and Love came into situations where the roster had some high points. The Falcons though, despite spending the previous 3 top years (all top 10 picks) on offensive skill positions, do not have an elite offensive grouping, and their defense looks to be in the bottom half of the league. In 2 years when they can move on from Cousins, the team will have had to make decisions on 2 of those recent top 10 offensive positions and maybe their best defensive player will be at retirement age. And, if Cousins is everything that they hope, then they are less likely to get better in the next 2 years through the draft to make the situation better in 2027.

All of this is minor to this next point though. Why did you sign a big name QB in free agency on a team with a bunch of holes to win now, if you aren't going to give the team options to win now? I am a huge fan of forward thinking and teams not sacrificing tomorrow in order to win today, but this pick just doesn't make sense in any direction. Cousins should make the team better and possibly a playoff team this season, which is going to hurt the draft position next year. The team needed impact players to really win big now though, and they just burned their biggest bullet on someone who won't play for 2 years (if he does play within 2 years, then they just burned 150 million on a player who won't play). So, they should be a little better today and next year thanks to the veteran QB, still too many deficiencies to be really good though, and they are hurting their ability to be good "tomorrow" because they will be better for the next year or 2 sliding them down the draft order. It's like mediocrity is the goal.


As a side note. I am curious to see how the success translates from college to NFL that guys like Penix and Bo Nix have. Guys who took advantage of the extra COVID eligibility and set the college football world on fire as guys who had been in college football systems for 5 and 6 years.