Kirk Cousins appeared to be back in peak form as the NFL calendar turned to October.
The 36-year-old quarterback, not quite one year removed from surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon, passed for 509 yards and four touchdowns in the Atlanta Falcons’ Week 5 overtime victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
As recently as five weeks ago, Cousins was coming off a two-game stretch in which he tossed seven touchdown passes with no interceptions while averaging 9.4 yards per attempt.
He was the NFC’s Offensive Player of the Week twice in October.
It’s been a disaster for Cousins ever since. The Falcons benched him Tuesday after a five-game stretch of futility featuring nine interceptions, one touchdown pass and a single victory, 15-9 over the Las Vegas Raiders on Monday night. That was it for Cousins.
The chart below shows Cousins’ EPA in his final 14 starts with the Minnesota Vikings compared to his first 14 with Atlanta, including four negative outings in the last five games.
We know what’s next for the Falcons. Rookie first-round draft choice Michael Penix Jr. becomes their starting quarterback.
We do not yet know what the future holds for Cousins. If he’s reached the end as a viable starter, there isn’t much to talk about. But with quarterback demand exceeding supply, and with Cousins having produced at times even during this disappointing season, the possibilities are intriguing.
Cousins has a no-trade clause in his contract. His $27.5 million salary next season is guaranteed, with an additional $10 million in 2026 bonus money becoming guaranteed in March.
It’s difficult to envision another team acquiring Cousins and that contract from the Falcons by trade. But if Cousins decided after the season he wanted out, the Falcons could release him with a post-June 1 designation, which would help them mitigate the salary-cap impact. That’s easier to envision.
Is Cousins finished?
Vinny Testaverde was 35 when he suffered a torn Achilles in 1999. He returned to play eight more seasons, including three as a full-time starter. The New York Jets had a 19-13 record with Testaverde in the lineup over the two seasons immediately after the injury (Testaverde led the NFL in pass attempts and interceptions in 2000, his first year back).
Dan Marino was in his age-32 season when he suffered a torn Achilles in 1993. He went to the Pro Bowl in each of the first two seasons after the injury and started 86 regular-season games after the injury.
Cousins and 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers have both appeared diminished from a mobility standpoint this season after returning from Achilles tendon surgery.
Aaron Rodgers said he thinks Kirk Cousins will be better next year since he’ll be further away from his Achilles injury and feels he has a lot of good years left in him.
Rodgers, asked if he’ll be better next year too for the same reason: “It’s possible. I might be on the beach…
— Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt) December 18, 2024
Hall of Fame-caliber quarterbacks such as Rodgers, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, John Elway, Kurt Warner, Drew Brees and Warren Moon produced strong seasons past Cousins’ current age, including when they were coming off injuries (Manning had his fourth neck surgery at age 35) or hadn’t played as well recently (Warner with the Giants).
The history isn’t as memorable for mid-tier quarterbacks coming off higher-interception seasons like the one Cousins produced for the Falcons.
Matt Hasselbeck was never a full-time starter again after tossing 18 touchdown passes with 14 interceptions for the Titans in 2011, his age-36 season. The same was true for Chris Chandler after he had 16 touchdowns and 14 interceptions for the Falcons in 2001, his age-36 season.
Russell Wilson 2.0
The Pittsburgh Steelers are getting great value from Wilson while Wilson’s former team, the Denver Broncos, picks up most of the tab.
A similar situation could unfold with Cousins.
The Broncos signed Wilson to a five-year, $242 million extension in September 2022. They released him a year and a half later, even though they still had to pay Wilson his $39 million salary this season.
Wilson became free to sign with any team, with whatever salary he earned offsetting the $39 million he’s getting from Denver. This allowed the Steelers to sign Wilson on a one-year deal worth the veteran minimum, $1.2 million.
Wilson wasn’t as mobile as he’d been during his prime years. There were no guarantees he would recapture past form. But at that discounted price, what did the Steelers have to lose?
Wilson has upgraded the position for the Steelers, emerging as their leading candidate to start next season if the sides can agree on a contract.
Cousins is three months older than Wilson and could be physically stronger next season than he is right now.
Why not the Browns?
The Cleveland Browns have watched the Wilson experiment work well for their AFC North rival in Pittsburgh.
While the Browns could be stuck with Deshaun Watson and his contract for another year or even two, they clearly need alternatives.
Re-signing Jameis Winston seemed more appealing several weeks ago, but Cleveland benched him this week after Winston struggled. The Browns, while improved on offense after Winston replaced the injured Watson in the lineup, ranked 32nd in EPA per play across each quarterback’s seven-game starting stretches, per TruMedia.
Cleveland could select a quarterback in the 2025 draft while bringing in Cousins on a deal similar to the one Wilson signed with Pittsburgh.
The fit could be ideal. Cousins and Browns coach Kevin Stefanski overlapped on the Vikings in 2018 and 2019, when Cousins was the starting quarterback and Stefanski was quarterbacks coach and later offensive coordinator. That arrangement worked well enough for the Browns to hire Stefanski as their coach in 2020. Cleveland extended Stefanski’s contract before this season.
The Browns are currently slotted seventh in the draft order. They could select a quarterback early or wait until later. Whatever the case, Cousins’ relationship with Stefanski could help him trust the Browns to be more straightforward with him than the Falcons were when they surprisingly selected Penix weeks after signing Cousins.
At this stage, Cousins wouldn’t command a guaranteed long-term starting job, anyway.
Wilson competed with Justin Fields through the offseason before emerging as the starter. Cousins might need to compete as well. He’d have more time to get stronger in his second year removed from surgery.
The play-action and under-center tactics Stefanski prefers could take pressure off Cousins after the Falcons, for whatever reason, did not use either much with him this season.
The chart below shows the play-action and under-center rates on first and second down for Cousins’ teams since he joined the Vikings in 2018. The Falcons rank last in play-action rate and 28th in under-center rate on early downs this season, a major departure from Cousins’ tenure in Minnesota, despite Atlanta offensive coordinator Zac Robinson’s background with the Los Angeles Rams, who also favor those tactics.
Was Cousins too limited physically to execute the under-center game with its bootlegs and quick movements on a down-to-down basis?
For all Cousins’ struggles of late, his EPA per pass play through 14 games this season (0.5) would rank fourth among all Browns starters since 2000 (min. 10 starts), per TruMedia.
Would other options appeal?
Signing a minimum-salary deal with another team would mean no new money for Cousins.
Without financial incentives in the short term, Cousins might prioritize other factors. Where could he start? Where could he win? Where would he already know the offense? Where would he find coaches he trusts? Where would he and his family want to live?
Only Cousins can decide how to answer those questions, how much to weigh each and what else might matter to him.
Some possibilities beyond Cleveland:
• The price to re-sign Wilson in Pittsburgh could turn Cousins into a lower-cost alternative for the Steelers. Under this scenario, the Broncos and Falcons would be paying more than $75 million over a two-year period to finance the Steelers’ veteran quarterbacks.
• The New York Giants and New York Jets could need quarterbacks. Would Cousins really want to engage those teams in that market at this stage of his career? A less-mobile Cousins playing behind those teams’ offensive lines could be disastrous. What will the coaching situations there look like?
• The Las Vegas Raiders enter Week 16 first in the 2025 draft order, with the Giants slotted second.
Cousins could serve as an attractive bridge to a highly drafted QB, but after what he just experienced with the Falcons, who did not inform Cousins they would select Penix until they were on the clock, going to a rebuilding team almost certain to select a quarterback among the top five picks could shorten his runway sufficiently to make the job less appealing.
• The Tennessee Titans just benched Will Levis, signaling they’ll be in the market for quarterback help. They’re sixth in the 2025 draft order now. They do not seem to be an aging Cousins away from relevance.
• The San Francisco 49ers were interested in signing Cousins for years, but the timing was never right. Would they consider bringing in Cousins if Brock Purdy faltered badly down the stretch or suffered an injury?
Would the 49ers consider Cousins as a veteran backup/insurance policy as part of a strategy to make one last Super Bowl run with their current core? Would this appeal to Cousins in the absence of an attractive starting job? Or might he just prefer to stay with the Falcons?
A possible timeline
The Falcons drafted Cousins’ replacement before Cousins played a single down for the team. The decision to use a top-10 pick on Penix so quickly after signing Cousins to a big-money deal caught the NFL off-guard. Did Atlanta have reason to think Cousins might not hold up physically or recapture past form?
“I really like Penix, but if you are going to draft him, why would you not have taken Justin Fields from Chicago or signed Russell Wilson and then drafted Penix?” an exec from another team said before the season. “No one would fault you for that. They would have been much better off with money invested elsewhere. And the thing about Penix is, he is ready to play now. He is not the rookie QB that needs to wait.”
Cousins’ four-year, $160 million deal with the Falcons is effectively a two-year deal for $100 million. The Falcons might want to keep Cousins as insurance for Penix, whose medical history at the University of Washington was concerning for some teams. Cousins, by all accounts, wanted to stay in Atlanta for the longer term.
There’s no need for anyone to make a decision right now.
Free agency is scheduled to begin March 12 after a two-day negotiating period. Another $10 million in Cousins’ contract becomes guaranteed March 16. That could be a trigger date.
(Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
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