Penix Walks Back Into the Fire, and Atlanta Remembers How to Score

GREEN BAY — The first throw of Michael Penix Jr.’s season was not a postcard home. Xavier McKinney picked him off over the middle on Atlanta’s opening series, the kind of welcome Lambeau still hands out on cold Thursday nights. For a quarterback who’d cried in the locker room before the last preseason game — Falcons safety Jessie Bates III said Penix knew he wasn’t ready yet after left ACL surgery last November — that pick could have been a long walk back to the sideline.

It wasn’t. Penix settled. By the second and third quarters he was 13-of-15 with a touchdown and perfect on third downs in that stretch. He finished 18-of-25 for 256 yards, one score, and that early interception. Bijan Robinson ran for 194 yards and two touchdowns. Drake London caught nine passes for a career-high 194 yards. Atlanta erased a 7-0 deficit with 27 straight points and left Lambeau with a 35-14 win — the Falcons’ first victory of Kevin Stefanski’s tenure, and the Packers’ first home-opener loss since 2012.

The story of the night is not a miracle. It’s a restart that finally had the ball in the right hands. Atlanta had scored 16 points in two games and hadn’t run a single red-zone snap — the first team since the 2008 Rams to go that long without one. With Penix under center, the Falcons piled up 498 yards, held the ball for 37:05, and outrushed Green Bay 242 to 17.

“Definitely after that interception, I started getting a rhythm, and everything started clicking,” Penix said. Bates put the wait in plainer terms: Penix had been “dying to get back.”

The rehab nobody filmed

Stefanski’s postgame praise landed on the work that never makes a highlight reel. Extra weight-room sessions. Extra treatment. Running alone with trainers when the stadium was empty. “I’m proud of him,” Stefanski said. “It’s not easy to rehab from injuries.” Penix, emotions still close to the surface, kept returning to gratitude — for trainers, family, his wife, teammates — and to the two-word frame he offered on the field: “But God.” London called him “the definition of resiliency.” The football proof was simpler: healthy enough to finish, sharp enough to feed London and Robinson until Lambeau started booing its own.

Bijan and London as a two-man weather system

Robinson carried 29 times, broke runs of 55 and 31 yards, and scored from three and two. London’s 68-yard catch set up Nick Folk’s 31-yard field goal that made it 27-7. They became the first teammates with at least 190 yards from scrimmage each in a road game since Lawrence McCutcheon and Ron Jessie in 1976. Robinson talked about the red zone like a weight finally off the building: get there, punch it in, keep doing it. He also called London his “blood brother.” When Penix is healthy, that pairing isn’t a scheme quirk. It’s the offense.

Green Bay’s night without oxygen

Jordan Love went 28-of-53 for 312 yards and two touchdowns, but Green Bay’s ground game vanished — nine carries, 17 yards. Matt LaFleur opened his presser with “Well, that was a humbling night,” then sharpened it: “It was a butt-whooping.” Love owned the execution gap: after the early touchdown drive, the Packers “couldn’t get into a groove” and “couldn’t put drives together.” The Packers also played without Josh Jacobs (still on the commissioner’s exempt list), with Aaron Banks (toe) and season-ending injury to right tackle Zach Bako-Bewele already thinning the line. Rookie Jager Burton started at left guard. Missing pieces explain some of it. Fifty-three pass attempts and 17 rush yards explain the rest.

The hinge plays Green Bay still has to live with

Late in the first quarter, Brenton Cox Jr.’s roughing-the-passer call on third-and-11 gifted Atlanta a first down; Robinson’s 55-yarder came on the next snap and set up the tying score. LaFleur wouldn’t discuss the flag — “I’m not gonna get fined” — but said the Packers “have to respond better.” Zach Harrison blocked Trey Smack’s 47-yard try that would have tied it at 10. Early in the third, Love’s fourth-and-1 play-action from the Atlanta 7 sailed high for Christian Watson. Those three moments turned a manageable home opener into a 27-point hole. Penix’s five-yard touchdown to Austin Hooper before half, Brian Robinson Jr.’s seven-yard run later, and Bijan’s late two-yarder with a two-point conversion were just the Falcons cashing the invitations.

Stefanski’s first win, and what he thinks pulled it together

This was Stefanski’s first victory in Atlanta after replacing Raheem Morris. Reporting around the building had him telling people Penix would “pull everything together” they’d been installing. Postgame, he credited offensive coordinator Tommy Rees for giving Penix concepts he was comfortable with, and Penix for “great decisions with the ball.” One night does not settle a quarterback debate. One night after two weeks of offensive nonexistence does settle whether the room looks different with Penix available. It does.

Injury scraps that still matter Friday morning

Atlanta played without corner A.J. Terrell (groin, IR this week). Bates left briefly in the third and returned. Green Bay lost linebacker Edgerrin Cooper to a concussion evaluation and guard Jacob Monk to a late quad issue. The Packers already have 10 days before they play at Tampa Bay on Oct. 4. Atlanta goes to New Orleans on Monday night, Oct. 5. Both clubs are 1-2. Only one of them just remembered how to stay on the field.

What Penix refused to overclaim

Even after the rout, Penix kept the temperature down. “We got a long season to go,” he said. “That game was far from perfect.” That line is useful. The Falcons did not invent a finished product on a Thursday in Wisconsin. They proved the skeleton of one — Penix to London, Robinson between the tackles, a defense that can force Love into volume without rhythm — is still in the building. For a franchise that spent two weeks scoring like a practice squad, that is the whole point of bringing him back.