{"id":842465,"date":"2026-03-30T06:37:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T06:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/842465\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T06:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T06:37:22","slug":"tua-tagovailoa-offers-to-mentor-michael-penix-jr-with-atlanta-falcons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/842465\/","title":{"rendered":"Tua Tagovailoa offers to mentor Michael Penix Jr. with Atlanta Falcons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>March 29, 2026, 11:30 a.m. PT<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Former <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/sports\/college-sports\/big-ten\/washington\" data-autotag=\"e2d27eb1-fb64-411e-93e5-a29debbf9997\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Washington Huskies<\/a> superstar quarterback Michael Penix Jr. spent the first two seasons of his NFL career with the Atlanta Falcons, learning from a seasoned veteran in Kirk Cousins. However, now that he&#8217;s been released, general manager Ian Cunningham needed to go out and find a veteran quarterback to not only help mentor Penix, who is recovering from ACL surgery, but also potentially compete with him for the starting job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The Falcons settled on another left-hander in former Miami Dolphins signal caller Tua Tagovailoa, who has had a somewhat treacherous career arc of his own after being selected with the No. 5 overall pick in the 2020 NFL draft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The 28-year-old Alabama product, who has dealt with his own slew of injuries throughout his time in the NFL, stated during a press conference that he knows how valuable a mentor can be for any young quarterback, and that he&#8217;s open to mentoring Penix.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">\u201cI look at myself when I was a rookie, and I was very grateful for the chance that I had with someone like Ryan Fitzpatrick,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">As Washington fans got all too familiar with during his two years on Montlake, Penix is no stranger to competition and when healthy, he has all the arm talent to triumph over Tagovailoa, who has 18,166 passing yards and 120 touchdowns to his name in his career. But that doesn&#8217;t mean that Tagovailoa<\/p>\n<p>Expert NFL picks: <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":body nav (nfl)|e|auto spike click:5|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_sp_a\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/picks\">Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">\u201cYou either love competition, you\u2019re a competitor, or you\u2019re not. You don\u2019t just go from being a competitor to let me just relax a little bit,&#8221; Tagovailoa said. &#8220;I just don\u2019t think that\u2019s how it works. You\u2019re either a competitor or you\u2019re not. So I embrace the competition. I\u2019m excited to work alongside, with Mike, and I\u2019m excited to work with the team, with the guys, and I think it\u2019s gonna be fun this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 29, 2026, 11:30 a.m. PT Former Washington Huskies superstar quarterback Michael Penix Jr. spent the first two&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[95878,223,254,2554,224,7,6,106317,96358,95882,97157,96194,95896,95888,95906,96071,95883,95950,99415,102468,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-842465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-falcons","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-atlanta","10":"tag-atlanta-falcons","11":"tag-atlantafalcons","12":"tag-falcons","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sstssportscollegehuskiesfootball","16":"tag-sstsnfootball","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagkirk-cousins","19":"tag-tagmichael-penix-jr","20":"tag-tagnational-sports","21":"tag-tagnfl","22":"tag-tagoverall-positive","23":"tag-tagsmg-timely","24":"tag-tagsports-news","25":"tag-tagtua-tagovailoa","26":"tag-tagwashington-huskies","27":"tag-tagwashington-huskies-football","28":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116316749523911068","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}