Penix has all the makings for a breakout sophomore season. But what could that look like?
As a part of ESPN’s off-season coverage, 13 NFL analysts were tasked with doing the impossible: Predicting the 2025 NFL season. They were given prompts such as “Who’s playing in and winning Super Bowl LX?” “Who’s winning next year’s MVP?” “What’s the best potential move of the offseason?”
The teams at the top of the league dominated the piece: A lot of Kansas City Chiefs, Detroit Lions, Buffalo Bills, Baltimore Ravens hype and name-dropping and for good reason. These teams have sustained a level of winning that deserves to be discussed nationally. One team that hasn’t: The Atlanta Falcons.
While the Lions and Bills fight over the right to trade for coveted free agents and Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes fill up their MVP trophy cases, the Falcons are left by the wayside. Uninteresting, unflattering and painfully mediocre has been this team’s lot for too long.
But there was a silver lining: One of the prompts was to “Name one team, coach or player, who will break out in the 2025 season.” National NFL Reporter Jeremy Fowler finally put the Falcons on the board, stating that soon-to-be-sophomore quarterback Michael Penix Jr. is set to break out next season.
Everything is set up for him — a viable supporting cast, a strong running game and a winnable NFC South. Atlanta will showcase his immense talents in Year 2.
This vote of confidence was necessary, the Falcons have too much talent on the offensive side of the ball to be completely ignored next season. But, it did lead to an interesting question in my mind: What would a breakout season look like for Penix in year two of his career?
I sought out to find a viable benchmark.
Methodology
So, to do this, I utilized Stathead.com, Sport Reference and Pro-Football-Reference’s statistics database, which dates back to even before the NFL-AFL merger. But to answer our question, we don’t necessarily have to go back that far.
For this, we looked to Stathead’s “Player Season Finder” to find the top sophomore seasons from quarterbacks dating back to 2017.
To qualify for a full season’s worth of work, the quarterback had to have at least 450 attempts and had to be in the second year of his NFL career.
Finally, I sorted the results using Stathead’s prime efficiency metric: Adjusted Net Yards/Attempt, where the quarterback’s numbers are put into a formula to attempt to quantify their on-field production (including sacks) to a single efficiency metric, and find the top ten sophomore seasons and average them out.
The results are below:
2018 Patrick Mahomes
383/580 (66%), 5097 yards, 50 TDs, 12 INTs, 113.8 Passer Rating, 8.89 ANY/A
2017 Jared Goff
296/477 (62.1%), 3804 yards, 28 TDs, 7 INTs, 100.5 Passer Rating, 7.72 ANY/A
2021 Joe Burrow
366/520 (70.4%), 4611 yards, 34 TDs, 14 INTs, 108.3 Passer Rating, 7.51 ANY/A
2021 Justin Herbert
443/672 (65.9%), 5014 yards, 38 TDs, 15 INTs, 97.7 Passer Rating, 6.95 ANY/A
2018 Deshaun Watson
345/505 (68.3%), 4165 yards, 26 TDs, 9 INTs, 103.1 Passer Rating, 6.87 ANY/A
2022 Trevor Lawrence
387/584 (66.3%), 4113 yards, 25 TDs, 8 INTs, 95.2 Passer Rating, 6.66 ANY/A
2020 Kyler Murray
375/558 (67.2%), 3971 yards, 26 TDs, 12 INTs, 94.3 Passer Rating, 6.45 ANY/A
2017 Dak Prescott
308/490 (62.9%), 3324 yards, 22 TDs, 13 INTs, 86.6 Passer Rating, 5.74 ANY/A
2019 Josh Allen
271/461 (58.8%), 3089 yards, 20 TDs, 9 INTs, 85.3 Passer Rating, 5.71 ANY/A
2024 C.J. Stroud
336/532 (63.2%), 3727 yards, 20 TDs, 12 INTs, 87.0 Passer Rating, 5.44 ANY/A
Average
351/538 (65.2%), 4091 yards, 29 TDs, 11 INTs, 97.6 Passer Rating, 6.83 ANY/A
After calculating all ten of these seasons, from Mahomes’ crazy 2018 run to CJ Stroud’s relatively disappointing run back to the playoffs this past season, it seems that the benchmark hovers around:
– Completion Percentage of 65% or higher
– 4,000+ Passing Yards
– 25-30 TDs
– 10-13 INTs
– An ANY/A of 6.5 or greater.
Now, I want to clarify: This is a floor for what a “breakout” season could be. With the Falcons’ offense’s firepower and the defense’s potential to upgrade to at least a passable unit this offseason, Penix’s sophomore season could truly be special.
Penix has a prime opportunity to truly solidify himself as a quarterback to worry about for the next decade or more, which would not only be music to Falcons fans’ ears but for general manager Terry Fontenot’s, as well.