The Atlanta Falcons benching Week 1 starting quarterback Kirk Cousins in favor of 2024 first-round draft pick Michael Penix Jr. in December seemingly sparked the beginning of the end of Cousins’ Atlanta tenure.
During a Tuesday morning appearance on NFL Network, Cousins addressed his future in the league.
“I definitely feel like I have a lot of good football left in me,” Cousins said, as shared by Jeremy Bergman of the NFL’s website. “Time will tell. It’s still kind of uncertain. We’ll get to March and know a lot more. But I think the focus for me really is getting healthy. That’s really my focus is I gotta get healthy.”
Cousins was still recovering from the torn Achilles he suffered in October 2023 when he signed a four-year, $180M contract that included $100M guaranteed to join the Falcons last March. The veteran, who turned 36 years old in August, later hinted he would’ve made a different choice in free agency had he known that the Falcons would select Penix with the eighth overall pick of the 2024 draft.
While Cousins helped the Falcons get to 6-3, analysts noted that he eventually looked “out of gas” weeks before he was relegated to QB2 duties ahead of Christmas. Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot somewhat surprisingly said after Atlanta missed the playoffs that he’d be “very comfortable moving forward with [Cousins] as a backup,” but logic suggests everybody involved probably needs a clean break.
“I’m no good to the Falcons, I’m no good to a team if I’m not feeling really good,” Cousins continued. “That’s really where my focus has been through January and February now that the season has wound down, really taking all the time I can to get my body feeling really good.”
Per Pro Football Reference, Cousins ranked 28th with a 50.4 adjusted QBR and 23rd with an 88.6 passer rating for the campaign. He tossed 18 touchdown passes along with a league-high (tied with Baker Mayfield of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) 16 interceptions over 14 games.
Teams in need of a so-called “bridge” starting quarterback such as the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants are expected to pursue Cousins assuming he becomes available. It sounds like he will want to at least compete for a QB1 job once he fully recovers from physical setbacks that affected him this past fall.
“Now that the season’s over, you have the time and the energy to say, OK, let’s get the right ankle back, let’s get the shoulder back, let’s get the elbow back, and if we can do that, [I] feel like I got a new life ahead of me in pro football,” he added.
