For a few hours one day back in the first week of March, there was a window where the Minnesota Vikings and Kirk Cousins expected to stay together.
In the end, trepidation on Cousins’ behalf turned the line cold.
The Vikings made the mistake of showing their cards to a 35-year-old rehabbing a repair of his ruptured Achilles. Minnesota was transparent in withholding oodles of guaranteed money that its plan was to invest one of two first-round draft picks in a quarterback (enter JJ McCarthy).
Cousins glared back with a disapproving side smirk and packed for another new beginning in Atlanta, the third team to pay top-of-market costs, with fingers crossed he could find his legs and maybe even show up for a playoff game.
He explained in March how he came to rationalize leaving the Vikings in what now hits like a comedy routine crafted in Minnesota. Nice irony.
“I think in Minnesota it was trending over the last couple offseasons to being somewhat year-to-year. As we talked with Atlanta, it felt like this was a place where if I play at the level I expect to play, that I can retire a Falcon,” Cousins said after taking home more than $180 million from Minnesota for the 2018-2023 seasons.
(The next graph is best read in your best voice impression of Dateline’s Keith Morrison)
Without sharing their plans, the Falcons dropped the pen at Cousins’ signing—four years, $180 million—and began scrawling scouting reports on the 2024 draft’s top quarterbacks. Six weeks later, unbeknownst to Cousins, Atlanta invested the No. 8 pick in the draft on Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. That Cousins smirk now gritted teeth, the Falcons took Penix two spots ahead of the Vikings’ selection of McCarthy.
To grasp the context of it all, rewind to Cousins entering the league as a fourth-round pick in the same draft the then-Redskins selected Robert Griffin III 100 picks earlier as the future face of the franchise. A brief pause for foreshadowing and history wrapped together: It was offensive assistant Kyle Shanahan in Washington who felt Cousins was too rich of a value to pass up at pick 102. Then head coach Mike Shanahan recalled telling Cousins to prepare every day like he’s the starter, because that reality is one or two plays away.
Cousins battled to win the starting job in 2014 but was on a short leash until he began the 2015 season as the QB1 in Washington. His trademark moment came in a rally to beat the Buccaneers after falling behind 24-0, then celebrating with his much-repeated “You like that?!?” concourse outburst.
The season ended with Cousins losing a fumble and being sacked six times by the Packers in the wild-card round.
That set up the franchise tag staredown with Washington, which didn’t want to risk losing Cousins to a “poison pill” contract offer and hit him with the exclusive tag. At the time, the $20 million cost per season was more than 22 percent of the salary cap. He was given the exclusive tag again in 2017 despite not making the playoffs in 2016. Washington went 7-9, and Cousins went to Minnesota in March 2018 on the richest contract in NFL history, a fully guaranteed $84 million deal through the 2020 season.
In 2018, with the playoffs on the line in the final week of the regular season against the Bears, Cousins passed for 132 yards and the Vikings lost 24-10.
In 2019, Cousins had 26 touchdowns and six picks and pushed the Vikings to the wild-card playoffs and a win over the Saints before a blowout at San Francisco (27-10) ended Minnesota’s season.
The Vikings opted to re-up with Cousins on a two-year, $66 million deal in March 2020, and he made only one more playoff start—a 2022 home loss to the sixth-seeded New York Giants.
Cousins had bright moments and seven wins in his ongoing tenure with the Falcons with 509 yards and four touchdowns in a win over division-leading Tampa Bay six days after leading a game-winning drive to beat the Eagles 22-21. A U-turn from a 6-3 start was his undoing. Cousins went four consecutive games without a touchdown, all losses, before a TD pass helped Atlanta beat the 2-12 Raiders on Monday by a 15-9 count.
Head coach Raheem Morris officially moved Cousins to the bench and named Penix as the QB1 for Week 16 on Sunday. Even from the bench, Cousins is guaranteed $62.5 million this season and $27.5 million in 2025. He turns 37 in August.
Before that, when Cousins’ $10 million roster bonus is due in March, he’ll almost assuredly be back on the market—perhaps a reunion with Shanahan or in a mea culpa return as McCarthy’s backup in Minnesota—chasing his second career playoff win while rolling past $300 million in lifetime NFL earnings.
Final chapters rarely go as scripted in the NFL.
That’s not to say Cousins won’t have one more opportunity to prod the public with, You Like That?!?
It’s worth noting Penix didn’t arrive in the NFL with anything close to a clean medical history. Before taking Washington to the national title game in January, Penix’s road to Atlanta was pocked with season-ending injuries in 2018 (ACL), 2019 (clavicle), 2020 (ACL) and 2021 (AC joint).
The closing schedule gives Atlanta enough of an angle that the playoffs could be a reality. The schedule serves up the NFL’s other 2-12 teams, the NY Giants, at home in Penix’s first career start on Sunday before—hello, football scriptwriters!—what shapes up as a wildcard spot game in primetime (Cousins is 14-21 after winning Monday) against … Washington in Week 17.
Win that game, and Atlanta would need only a win at home on Jan. 5 against the Carolina Panthers (3-11) to earn a playoff spot.
In a league thriving on plot twists, could Cousins play a paid role?
He’ll have plenty of time to think about what might have been in Minnesota, where a few hours in March paved the path for the resurrection of Sam Darnold and this unhappy ending in Atlanta.
