KIRK COUSINS STEPPED into the media room at the Atlanta Falcons facility in Flowery Branch, Georgia, with a smile for his introductory news conference on March 13, 2024. Wearing a Falcons-red tie and gray suit, the franchise’s new starting quarterback said all the right things.
Almost.
Cousins talked about his family’s ties to the area — his wife Julie is from metro Atlanta and her parents, diehard Falcons fans, still live there — and how he was expecting this to be the last stop in an NFL career that began in 2012.
He also let something slip that, at the time, seemed innocuous. Cousins complimented the Falcons organization, saying he had spoken to members of the team’s “support staff” a day earlier and came away impressed.
“When you get here and you look around and you think, boy, there’s great people here,” Cousins said at the time. “And it’s not just the football team. I mean, I’m looking at the support staff, meeting, calling yesterday, calling our head athletic trainer and talking to our head of PR, I’m thinking we’ve got good people here.”
The problem was Cousins was not supposed to be in contact with anyone from the Falcons the day prior, and the communication was a violation of NFL rules. Free agents can only speak with team personnel beginning at 4 p.m. on the first day of the league year, which was March 13, 2024 — the day Cousins addressed the media. Cousins’ comments led to a league investigation for tampering.
Three months later, the NFL docked the Falcons a 2025 fifth-round draft pick and fined them $250,000 for the violation, which also included “improper contact” with then-free agents wide receiver Darnell Mooney and tight end Charlie Woerner, both of whom Atlanta ended up signing.
It was the first misstep in a rocky relationship that reached its one-year anniversary Thursday. Along the way, there was a season-ticket milestone reached, a shocking draft pick, benching and surprising revelation about an undisclosed injury. It got so bad that one report indicated the Falcons would release Cousins by March 17, but recent indications suggest Cousins will stick around as a high-priced backup for second-year QB Michael Penix Jr., creating a potentially awkward situation.
The reason for Cousins’ likely return is practical, if not perfect. The Falcons signed Cousins to a $90 million guaranteed contract (with a $10 million roster bonus coming March 17 if he’s still on the team). They owe Cousins that money whether they keep him or release him. And any potential trade would have to be cleared by Cousins, who has a no-trade clause. The Falcons perhaps figure if they’re going to be paying Cousins that much anyway, they might as well retain his services as a very good backup quarterback.
“We understand that it’s not ideal to have a [backup] quarterback at that cap number,” GM Terry Fontenot said last month at the NFL combine. “Now, when we gave him that contract, the expectation was for him to be the starter at this point. And so that is a good number for a starting quarterback. But now that he’s the backup, when we say we’re comfortable, we’re talking about the total funds allocated to the quarterback position and that’s already baked in.”
It makes sense from a business perspective, but the last thing the Falcons want is to stunt Penix’s growth in his first full season as QB1 by having him look over his shoulder at Cousins, a successful NFL quarterback for more than a decade.
For his part, Cousins was a model citizen as the backup late in 2024 and one of Penix’s biggest supporters. But Cousins, who will turn 37 before the start of the 2025 season, wants to be a starting quarterback somewhere in 2025 and fully believes he is still capable of being a good one. That’s why he met last week with Falcons owner Arthur Blank to see if the team would move on from him, according to a report by Sports Illustrated. The Falcons would not confirm the meeting.
“I still think I’ve got good football left in me and time will tell,” Cousins said last month on NFL Network. “It’s still kind of uncertain. We will get to March and know a lot more, but I think the focus for me really is getting healthy. … I’m no good to the Falcons, I’m no good to a team if I’m not feeling really good.”
COUSINS HAD JUST left a draft event at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on April 25, 2024 when he got a call from Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, who informed him that, in minutes, Atlanta was about to select Penix with the No. 8 overall pick.
Six weeks after Cousins’ introductory news conference, any chance of him retiring as a Falcon appeared to be dashed. Penix would be Atlanta’s quarterback of the future. Cousins was the team’s starting quarterback for 2024, but he would eventually cede the spot to Penix.
Fontenot said that night the team would stick with Cousins as long as he was playing well and the team was winning, even if it meant Penix had to sit for “four or five years.” What was more likely was that the Falcons would move on from Cousins after 2025, when the majority of his guaranteed money had been paid off.
Cousins was displeased on several levels. The Falcons didn’t mention the possibility of selecting a quarterback early in the draft in conversations with him, per sources. Drafting a QB in the first round “never came up as even a remote possibility” in Atlanta’s talks with Cousins before the draft, a source with direct knowledge of the veteran’s free agency process said.
On top of that, Altanta didn’t spend the first-round pick on a much-needed defensive standout who could have bolstered the team’s playoff chances in 2024.
But Cousins kept it professional, understanding the NFL is a business and the draft choice could have been made late. He texted Penix the night of the draft and wished him well.
When asked in a news conference if he would have stayed in Minnesota had he known the Falcons would draft a quarterback in the first round, Cousins replied, “I don’t really deal in hypotheticals.”
On the “Pure Athlete” podcast in June, Cousins described the Falcons taking a quarterback as coming “out of nowhere.” Regardless, there was excitement in Atlanta about Cousins’ signing. The Falcons sold out season-ticket packages before training camp for the first time in 20 years.
Then came a rocky debut. Cousins threw two interceptions in a Week 1 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers as he was coming back from a right Achilles he tore in 2023. But then he led the Falcons to a last-second comeback win over the eventual Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles on the road on Monday Night Football. It was the beginning of a 6-2 surge.
After Week 9, things started going south for Cousins and the Falcons — in a hurry.
Atlanta lost four straight with Cousins throwing eight interceptions and no touchdowns during that stretch. In his 13-year career, the quarterback had never gone back-to-back weeks without a touchdown pass since becoming an NFL starter in 2015.
On the Wednesday of Week 11, Cousins appeared on the Falcons injury report, with the report citing a right shoulder and right arm issue, though the team hadn’t gone through a full practice, just a walkthrough.
When asked that week, after a disastrous, 38-6 loss on the road against the Denver Broncos, Cousins said his appearance on the injury report was just a “clerical error” and he was 100% healthy.
The Falcons’ snapped their four-game losing streak in Week 15 with an ugly, 15-9 win over the Las Vegas Raiders. But Cousins seemed limited in that game, by a conservative offensive gameplan and by an apparent inability to throw the ball downfield with any consistency.
One day later, coach Raheem Morris announced a change — Penix would be the starter “moving forward,” beginning with Week 16. Like he did the night of the draft, Cousins reached out to Penix by phone. He told the rookie he’d “be in his corner.”
Cousins didn’t have to extend that courtesy after being benched, but he and Penix had forged a solid relationship over the previous few months. The two were neighbors in suburban Georgia and sometimes carpooled to the team plane for road games, with Cousins behind the wheel.
When asked at a news conference in Week 16 — the only time he spoke with the media after his benching — why he felt the need to address the situation with Penix right away, Cousins joked: “I like to shoot elephants in the room, so I just wanted to shoot one.”
Before Penix’s first start, against the New York Giants, he and Cousins gathered in a huddle just inside the team’s tunnel at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and said a prayer together. Cousins gave Penix a slap on the back and the two ran out onto the field, Penix in front.
In three games as a starter, Penix had some big moments, including a fourth-quarter comeback drive to tie the game on the road against the Washington Commanders in Week 17. Penix hit tight end Kyle Pitts on fourth-and-13 for a touchdown to send the game to overtime.
The Falcons ended up losing that game and fell again in Week 18 against the Carolina Panthers, despite Penix’s 312 passing yards and three touchdowns, including one on the ground. The team’s defense faltered and the Falcons finished 8-9, two games short of the NFC South title and a playoff berth. Atlanta has not had a winning record in seven seasons.
But Penix did enough in those three games to convince the franchise it had its long-term guy at quarterback, which meant Cousins was in limbo.
“The organization has a quarterback that is certainly bright, that is certainly our future, that certainly can go out there and make every single play,” Morris said after the Panthers loss. … “He’s certainly one of the guys that’s going to play in this league and be absolutely dominant for as long as we allow him.”
ON LOCKER ROOM cleanout day, Penix was one of the few Falcons to speak with the media. He was asked if he’d miss Cousins’ support if Cousins were no longer with the team in 2025.
“I just seen Kirk, I just was talking to Kirk, so I’m enjoying that right now,” Penix said. “He’s still here right now, so I’m enjoying that. So that’s all I can do right now.”
As it turns out, Cousins might not be going anywhere, despite comments on NFL Network during Super Bowl LIX week that caught many by surprise. Cousins told “Good Morning Football” that he took a hit in Week 10 against the New Orleans Saints and injured his right arm and shoulder, and “from there kind of dealing with that was something I was working through and just never really could get it to where I wanted it.”
That was the explanation that Falcons fans were looking for as to why Cousins’ performance had fallen off a cliff. Cousins had a total QBR of 59.3 (12th in the league) over the first nine weeks. From Week 10 to Week 15, his total QBR plummeted to 34.2 (31st in the league).
But Cousins had only appeared on the injury report once (the “clerical error” the quarterback referenced), and both Fontenot and Morris said at the combine that they were not aware Cousins was struggling with an injury. Cousins and the team had been adamant he was healthy and that his benching for Penix was a football decision.
“He was on the injury report that one week,” Fontenot said. “When a player is injured, we put him on the injury report, and that’s the only time he was on the injury report. So as far as we’re concerned, that’s the only injury we’re aware of.”
Had the Falcons known about Cousins’ injury and not put him on the injury report, the team could have faced discipline from the league.
When Fontenot said at his end-of-season news conference that the Falcons were proceeding with Cousins as the backup, it was easy to view it as posturing. Surely, the Falcons were just trying to salvage Cousins’ value for a trade. But the team has doubled down, per sources, and the most likely outcome is Cousins coming back to Atlanta in 2025.
If they do cut Cousins with a post-June 1 designation, the dead money would spread over the 2025 and 2026 seasons — $40 million in 2025 and $25 million in 2026. In the event of a trade, Falcons would likely have to eat some of his base salary.
But Cousins, league sources said, is frustrated by his current situation, and it’s no secret he wants to be a starter somewhere this coming season. His relationship with the team has remained cordial and professional, per league sources, with the understanding that this is a business.
When asked in December after being benched if he still wanted to be a starter in the league, Cousins’ answer revealed how much things have changed since that day a year ago, when he was all smiles and optimism that he was making the final stop of his career.
“I didn’t forget how to play quarterback,” he said.
