Sunday is the start of the 2024 season for most NFL teams, but it’s almost like a finish line for Kirk Cousins as well.
It has been a long 10 months for the veteran quarterback, from seeing his season with the Vikings end with a torn Achilles tendon in October to free agency and choosing the Falcons, to having Atlanta use its first-round pick on quarterback Michael Penix Jr. to not playing a snap in the preseason.
The waiting ends Sunday for Cousins, when the Steelers come to Atlanta (1 p.m. ET on FOX) and the Falcons open a season of optimism with the kind of quarterback they’ve sorely missed in recent years.
“The process of learning your identity with the new quarterback has been a lot of fun,” first-year Falcons coach Raheem Morris said Wednesday. “Right from the beginning — from OTA days, up until now to the training camp, to getting ready to play our first game, and we’re here, and I can’t wait to get out there and play.”
The Falcons have finished 7-10 three years in a row, but the addition of Cousins and Morris has ramped up expectations, with Atlanta as a heavy favorite among oddsmakers to win the NFC South, despite the Bucs being three-time defending champs. Cousins has been warmly embraced by his new team and his new city, and now just wants to return the favor by winning for his new fans.
“It’s a privilege,” Cousins said Wednesday. “Southern hospitality is a real thing. I mean, we’ve been so well received since March and every time, whether it was the grocery store or the barbershop or the airport, everybody has been so positive and welcoming. I look at [my wife] Julie when they walk away after saying, ‘Thanks for being here. We’re pulling for you’. I say, ‘I better play well. We’ve got to win, because they are doing their part.'”
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How much better can the Falcons be with Cousins at quarterback? His injury limited him to 10 games last season, and despite missing seven games, he finished with 18 touchdown passes, one more than the Falcons totaled in 2023 as a team. Season openers? In the past three, Falcons quarterbacks have averaged 165 passing yards and have totaled one touchdown pass; Cousins has averaged twice as many yards — 331 per game — with two touchdown passes in each of his last three openers.
The Falcons haven’t been to the playoffs since 2017, and postseason success has eluded Cousins as well. He ranks 24th all time with 39,471 passing yards, but he has only one postseason win in his career. Of the 23 quarterbacks with more passing yards, all but two have at least three playoff wins: Vinny Testaverde has two, Carson Palmer has one.
In Minnesota, Cousins threw to arguably the best receiver in the NFL in Justin Jefferson. In Atlanta, he’ll have a chance to make a star out of Drake London, a former top-10 pick who has just six touchdown catches in two seasons. He’ll also have two other top-10 picks to work with in second-year running back Bijan Robinson and fourth-year tight end Kyle Pitts.
Of course, it’s another top-10 pick who has complicated Cousins’ arrival in Atlanta. Even though the Falcons gave the four-time Pro Bowler a four-year, $180 million deal that includes $100 million guaranteed, they surprised many by selecting Penix with the No. 8 pick in the draft. The team then tried its hardest to make it clear that Penix is Atlanta’s quarterback of the future and not a threat to Cousins’ status as its quarterback of the present.
“Wouldn’t want anybody else leading our team,” said new offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, who at 38 is only two years older than his quarterback. “Kirk is who he is every single day. He’s an unbelievable leader with the guys in the locker room, which is awesome as a first-time guy coming in and the experience that he has, his leadership principles, all those things he stands for. … And obviously, we know the player. So, really confident with where Kirk’s at.”
Can the Falcons actually wind up as the 1-seed in the NFC?
Cousins can keep Penix in the background by playing well and consistently winning, though that will be a challenge out of the gate. Atlanta’s first five opponents — Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Kansas City, New Orleans and Tampa Bay — all had winning records last season, as do nine of the Falcons’ first 10. They will have played five of their six divisional games by Week 10, so a strong showing there could put them in the driver’s seat to close out the season against lesser opponents. As it stands, the final five quarterbacks they’ll face are the Vikings’ Sam Darnold, the Raiders’ Gardner Minshew, the Giants’ Daniel Jones, the Commanders’ Jayden Daniels and the Panthers’ Bryce Young.
Because Cousins didn’t play in the preseason, Sunday will be his first game reps of any kind since his injury last year, and they come against a Steelers defense that features edge rusher T.J. Watt, who led the NFL with 19 sacks last season. That first hit is something Cousins is strangely looking forward to, a welcome-back moment of sorts as he returns to the field and the sport he loves.
“There’s something in you that’s kind of sick that you want to get hit a little bit, because there’s just part of you in there that loves to compete,” Cousins said. “When you’re on the outside looking in, that’s tough. My boys are getting to an age now where they can watch me play and remember it and be a part of it. When they were watching other people play, it was like, ‘Oh man, I hope I can come back and play, because I want my boys to be watching this game with me playing.’
“So that’ll be a privilege too, on Sunday, when you step out there and know that they’re watching and can really take it in.”
Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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