FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Tua Tagovailoa will start for the Atlanta Falcons in Sunday’s season opener against the Steelers in Pittsburgh, with Michael Penix Jr. still working toward full strength.Meanwhile, the Falcons still feel like they are in the midst of a quarterback competition despite having a plan for Week 1.“I told (coach Kevin Stefanski) I’m not where I want to be right now,” Penix said Monday afternoon. “I want to be 100 percent so I can help this team win football games.”Penix doesn’t have a timeline for when he will feel ready to play but said he is “really, really close.” Earlier Monday, the Falcons announced Tagovailoa as their opening day starter, but Stefanski indicated the job could change hands.“I’m going to stay in Week 1 and not speculate past that,” Atlanta’s first-year coach said. “I don’t think it’s fair to go past this week on anything with our football team.”Why there's more to the Falcons' decision to start Tua Tagovailoa Week 1Josh KendallThe Falcons were the final team in the NFL to announce their Week 1 starter, and Tagovailoa will be the sixth different player to start the season for Atlanta in as many years. He will be the 14th quarterback to start a game for Stefanski, who was the head coach in Cleveland for six seasons before the Falcons hired him this offseason.Cooper Rush, an eight-year veteran who signed with Atlanta on the first day of training camp, will be Tagovailoa’s backup in Week 1, and Penix will be inactive.“I feel good,” Rush said Monday. “Those first couple weeks I was able to get a lot of work, so that was huge, and each week I have gotten better. It’s a well-coached system that is easy to pick up on.Penix, the No. 8 pick of the 2024 NFL Draft, suffered a season-ending ACL tear in Week 11 last year and only returned to full 11-on-11 practice on Aug. 24.“He is doing everything in his power to get ready,” Stefanski said. “Mike is getting better and better and better, and I’m very proud of how far he has come. This will continue to be something where we work together with Mike. I am very, very confident in the plan we have for Mike. We are all on the same page with this and feel really good about where he is at this point.”Penix continues to participate fully in practice with the Falcons.“I don’t think there’s a time stamp on (it),” Penix said of when he’ll be ready. “It’s more just a feel, how I feel each and every day, the soreness I may get or how I react to a big day. It’s all of that.”Penix has suffered five season-ending injuries since the beginning of his collegiate career and said he rushed himself back in previous situations.“I’ve been in the position where I did rush back, and I didn’t feel confident, and I didn’t play good, and it didn’t look good,” he said. “Obviously, with what I have been through, I definitely want to make sure I get to the point where I feel fully confident. It’s not about, ‘It’s a big year for me.’ It’s that I want to give this team 100 percent.”Tagovailoa, 28, will be making his 77th regular-season start. He came to Atlanta on a one-year contract for the veteran minimum salary ($1.2 million) this offseason after six years in Miami, where he made the Pro Bowl in 2023 but was released two seasons later despite a dead cap hit of nearly $100 million to the Dolphins.In his last two seasons as a starter, Tagovailoa was 45th in the league in yards per pass attempt (6.8) and 30th in passing EPA per dropback (minus-.01). According to The Athletic’s Austin Mock’s recently released QB Index, he finished 35th among 37 qualified starters last year.“I have gotten to see Tua work from the spring until now,” Stefanski said. “This is a new system for all these guys. He’s done a really nice job of working at it. He’s put himself in position to go be the best version of himself.”Tagovailoa missed the first week of training camp because of back spasms, then struggled in the early weeks of practice and in the preseason, but Atlanta’s coaches believe he has steadily improved and that a game plan tailored to his strengths will accelerate that improvement.“As you get through camp, you start to hone in on what each quarterback does well, and you want to devise the offense in terms of how they play and what suits their eye,” offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said. “He’s taking a lot of ownership in the operations part of the offense. We’ve asked him to do a lot of stuff he really hasn’t done in his career.”Tagovailoa has the fourth-highest completion percentage in the NFL since being drafted by the Dolphins in 2020, according to TruMedia.“When things are clean, he’s as accurate as they get,” Rees said.The Falcons will still be highly incentivized to have Penix start at some point this season because he is halfway through his rookie contract, and the team has not yet decided whether to pick up the fifth-year option that would cover the 2028 season.“I’m really, really proud of all those guys,” Stefanski said. “Those guys have worked like crazy all offseason, and they have pushed each other and supported each other, and that’s what we’ll continue to do with Tua. We’ll support him and make sure this is a collective group that is constantly looking to help each other.”