FLOWERY BRANCH, GA. – The refrains are familiar: Coaches praise his thoroughness and the honesty with which he owns mistakes. Teammates recall how quickly he worked the lunchroom to make connections, and how precisely he tutored them on how he wanted routes run and protections blocked.
No quarterback, especially not one drafted 102nd overall, lasts 13 years in the NFL without starting over in one way or another. Kirk Cousins, you’ll likely not be shocked to learn, has a process for it.
By the time they reach Cousins’ age, quarterbacks who’ve lasted this long in the NFL generally fall into one of two camps. There are the franchise cornerstones, who’ve played a decade or more with one team and have put their names on trophies. And then there are the journeymen, existing for a year at a time as backups who could run the offense if necessary.
Cousins occupies a kind of third category: the private contractor. He has made nearly $300 million in his NFL career, having earned at least $19 million each of his past nine seasons while playing for three teams. He is 948 yards away from joining Carson Palmer as the only NFL quarterbacks to post 4,000-yard seasons for three different teams.
There is a particular demand for his services, often at an estimable price, among teams that view themselves as a quarterback upgrade away from contention. While he doesn’t stay a decade with one team, he earns multiyear deals, often laden with guarantees from clubs willing to pay for a professional effort at the position, which Cousins delivers through an approach that is transferable, repeatable and deliberate.
He returns to U.S. Bank Stadium on Sunday, but this time as the quarterback of the visiting Atlanta Falcons, whose four-year, $180 million contract offer in March was enough to secure Cousins’ departure from Minnesota in free agency. The Falcons, coming off two years of QB uncertainty after Matt Ryan’s departure, saw Cousins as an immediate upgrade; Cousins, whose wife, Julie, is from the Atlanta area, saw the Falcons as a friendly landing spot that might be his last NFL stop.
The longevity of the arrangement could already be in question. The Falcons selected Michael Penix Jr. with the eighth pick in the draft, a move that initially stunned Cousins, and calls for the rookie have gotten louder after three consecutive Atlanta losses where Cousins threw six interceptions without a touchdown, including four in a loss to the Chargers last week.
Coach Raheem Morris backed Cousins this week, saying the 36-year-old has “been through a lot in his career. He’s built for this, and he’s ready to go.” But the calls for Penix could grow louder if a fourth straight Falcons loss this weekend knocks them out of a tie for first in the NFC South.