What the hell happened? A Kirk Cousins saga!
Following two moribund 7-10 seasons (Smith's tenure was actually three straight seasons with this exact same record) with a combo of Marcus Mariota, Desmond Ridder and Taylor Heinecke behind center, the Falcons, who were otherwise slowly building a more competitive roster, decided to splurge on free agent Kirk Cousins as a starter and then doubled down by drafting another QB, Michael Penix, Jr., with their first pick in the draft.
Those who have read my (much ballyhooed) QB comparisons know that I believe that Kirk Cousins is actually a much better QB than the average fan/eye test pundit believes him to be. Largely, that is based on my favorite quality QB stat, TD to INT ratio. Cousins' career ratio in at 2.29 to 1 (including this year's implosion of 18 TDs to 16 INTs) and he has had only one season as a full-time, full season starter in which he has thrown for less than 4000 yards, which was 2019 when he missed one start. In those 8 seasons of starting (almost) every game for his team, the ratio is 2.72 to 1. In his last year in Minnesota, before his season ending injury, his 2023 ratio was 3.6 to 1. In addition, in 2019 and 2021, his season ratios were over 4 to 1, which is in ridiculous territory.
Cousins has a 67% career completion percentage, throwing for an average of 262 yards per game. He may not have ever been a top 5 QB, but he is definitely in the 6-10 range in the league every year. He has been a very good NFL QB, possibly the best high round (4th round in 2012) QB draft pick outside of Brady and Dak Prescott in the modern NFL.
So, needless to say, this Falcons fan was very pleased by the signing. And things started out pretty great. After beating Dallas 27-21 on November 3rd, the 'Dirty Birds" were 6-3 and in complete control of the division, having beaten their closest division rivals, Tampa (4-5 at the time) twice and having not lost an NFC South game to that point. Then, both teams lost the next week, starting for Atlanta a streak of 4 straight losses, while Tampa recovered from their 4-6 record, winning the next 4 and flipping the division standings on their head. And all of this coincided with two strange occurrences. First, Kirk Cousins collapsed, and in particular, he collapsed in his best category, ratio. Leading into his benching after a win at Las Vegas, in a 5-game stretch, he threw 1 TD and 9 (!) interceptions. For the rest of the season, he threw 17 TDs and 7 INTs in 9 games, for a respectable 2.43 to 1 ratio, much in line with his overall career numbers. Had that trend continued, it would have been a 32 TD, 13 INT season.
The other odd, but unrelated, occurrence was that the defensive line suddenly came alive, collecting 21 of their 2024 total of 31 sacks on the season in the last 5 games.
As for Cousins, his overall numbers, other than the ratio, look very Kirk Cousins like. He was on his way to an extrapolated season of 4260 yards passing, a 67% completion rate (his career average) and 22 passing TDs, which, admittedly, would have been his lowest total as a starter. In 2023, in fact, he had thrown 18 TD passes in just 8 games before he was injured. It is the interceptions, however, that were the problem. Even with starting only 14 games, his INT total of 16 is a career season high. And in that 1-4 five game stretch proceeding his benching, it was decidedly in pressure situations when the bugaboo most reared its ugly head.
In the first of the 4 straight losses, against New Orleans, it was a 3-point game in the 4th quarter, the Falcons driving in New Orleans territory when Cousins threw his only interception with 2:16 left in the game. The next week, in Denver, his sole INT occurred when the game was already lost, down 28-6 in the 3rd quarter in a game that largely hinged on Atlanta having 4 defensive starters out with injuries.
After a BYE week came the bomb game, in which Cousins threw 4 interceptions, 3 coming in the final 4 drives of the game, two of which were in the 4th quarter in an imminently winnable game. The score was a 17-13 Chargers lead heading into the final quarter and neither team scored after that. In Minnesota the next week, Cousins threw two more interceptions, although only one was in crunch time. The game was tied at 21 after 3 quarters, but the Falcons fell behind 35-21 after the Vikings scored on their first drive of the 4th and then recovered a fumble on the ensuing kickoff, getting the short field for another quick TD. With Atlanta driving after that score and down to the Vikings' 25-yard line, Cousins threw a choking in the clutch, drive killing pick.
So, the tally after those 4 games was zero touchdown passes to 8 interceptions and an 0-4 record. Cousins finally got his first TD pass since 10:29 left in the third quarter against Dallas, 43 days before, against the Raiders and Atlanta DID win that game, 15-9. And, even then, Cousins lone INT of that game came one play after Atlanta took over with great field position after the second half opening kickoff was returned 38 yards by Avery Williams, out to near midfield.
Now, one of the things I always rail against in sports is the notion of player not being "clutch". I think that disdain started, as many do, with Yankees fans, who consistently tried to drag down A-Rod by saying that he was "not clutch". To which my reply was, "Well, how does he have 120 RBIs this season, then?". Because it is statistically IMPOSSIBLE to reach that many RBIs without hitting successfully in situations when runners are on base. Unless you hit 120 solo homeruns.
The "not clutch" label has been thrown often over the years at Kirk Cousins, with people justifying that label by mentioning that he doesn't often win "big games", such as Sunday night, Monday night and playoff games. Well, we can parse whether Sunday and Monday night games are "big", but Cousins did actually fail in the clutch in 3 of those four Falcons losses in the streak. Two of which were one score games for a great length of time and one that was tied going into the 4th quarter.
All of which is doubly odd because Cousins was VERY clutch at other moments in the season. He threw a late, game winning TD in week two AT Philadelphia in a night game. He drove Atlanta to a last-minute, game winning FG against New Orleans in week 4. He had a ridiculous 4 TD NIGHT game at Tampa in week 5, passing for 409 yards, the last 45 of those yards being an OT game winning TD pass. In the second game against the Bucs, in Tampa, Cousins threw a TD late in the 3rd to put the Falcons up by 14 and then killed 5 long minutes in the fourth on a drive (eventually ending in a missed FG) whose time length essentially prevented the Bucs from having enough time to come back.
But....he fumbled while down 24-14 (returned for a TD) and also threw two 4th quarter interceptions while trying to comeback at Seattle in week 7 and also threw a late first half interception at Kansas City in week 3, leading to a Chiefs' FG that brought the game to 14-13, Falcons at the half. Atlanta would eventually fall 22-17, although that was largely on coaching, as the Falcons had a long 4th quarter drive that ended with a turnover on downs at the KC 6-yard line instead of a FG attempt that would have made it a 2-point deficit with plenty of time (4:04) on the clock. So, when the Falcons subsequently drove again into FG range (the KC 13) but had to go for a TD as they were down by 5, this loss falls on Raheem Morris' shoulders.
Of course, as this is a post-mortem following the Falcons losing their final 2 games, each in overtime, it is clear that benching Cousins may have been both necessary and also the final nail in the season's coffin. Penix, Jr. finished 1-2 as a starter and the Falcons finished 8-9 and lost the division by the same two games they once led by. After 10 games, Atlanta was 6-4 with one division loss. Tampa was 4-6 and had lost twice to the Falcons. From that point, the Falcons finished 2-5 during what was initially seen as the "easy" part of their schedule, while Tampa finished 6-1 in their final 7 games to very deservedly take the division title. Perhaps now we can rightly place the label of "best QB in the division" onto Baker Mayfield, who has absolutely shined in two seasons as the Bucs' starter.
Could remaining with Cousins have salvaged the Falcons' season? There is really no way to tell. While it was a good idea to take a sneak peek at what you have in Penix, that was something that is more about public perception and should have been saved until next season or until the playoffs were off of the table. I say that mainly because, while practice is never a substitute for game action, the coaches are far more aware of "what they have" in a player because they see him every day in practice. I was all for the move IF the Falcons had lost in Las Vegas in Cousins' last game. But they didn't.
And that game preceded a game against the worst team in the NFL, the New York Giants. Penix won that game handily in his first NFL start, but certainly the Falcons would have won that one with Cousins at the helm. That win put the Falcons back in the division lead with two games left, tied with Tampa but with two victories over the Bucs in hand as the tiebreaker. Basically, the Falcons destiny was in their hands...as long as they kept winning, they were in the playoffs.
Penix did, in fact, come up very clutch at Washington, driving the Falcons to a game tying TD late in the 4th and putting them in position after that for a game winning 56-yard FG attempt. But fate had already intervened, as starting kicker Younghoe Koo had been injured and was replaced by a talented kicker but one with a lesser leg, Riley Patterson, who missed that kick that Koo would likely have put through. The other "fate" item also came through during that game AND during the finale against Carolina, the loss of the overtime coin toss. And the result was exactly the same in each game...Washington and Carolina both took the first possession all the way down the field and scored a game ending TD without the Falcons ever seeing the ball on offense in the overtime period.
Michael Penix, Jr. wasn't great nor was he terrible in any of those two losses, so you can't really speculate on whether the Falcons win either or both with Cousins as the starter. The Falcons loss at Washington was actually one of their better games of the season, a tie game at the end of regulation against a pretty good playoff team. Carolina was a different story, altogether. On the same Sunday that Atlanta was playing that pretty good game at Washington, Carolina absolutely laid down against the Bucs. Bryce Young was just okay in that game while Baker Mayfield played lights out and the Bucs blasted the Panthers 48-14. The next week, the Falcons D made that same Bryce Young look like Steve Young and the Panthers put 44 on the board, finally driving the stake through the Falcons heart. Not that by that time there was a lot of incentive left to win, as Tampa had closed out New Orleans before the Falcons-Panthers overtime had started, thus knocking Atlanta out of the playoffs regardless of their game's outcome.
Ultimately, the Kirk Cousins experiment failed. I feel that he was not fully recovered from his injury the previous season and thus never played up to his full capabilities that he had shown in his previous 9 seasons as a starter. His first 4 games were pretty pedestrian, as Kirk passed for 216 yards per game, a 64.7% completion rate with 4 TDs and 4 INTs. Atlanta was 2-2, however, in those 4 games against three 2024 playoff teams and Atlanta's big rival, New Orleans.
In the next 5 games, Atlanta built up a division lead, going 4-1 as Cousins was at his best on the season, passing for nearly 293 yards per game with 13 TDs and only 3 INTs, with a completion rate of 72.1%. Classic, vintage Cousins. The Falcons problems were solved!
Not so fast! Because incoming was the worst stretch of play that Cousins has had at any point in his career since he became a full-time starter. The yards per game were still decent at 236 per, but he threw those 9 interceptions that were offset by only one TD and his completion percentage went down a full 10% from over those middle 5 games, to 62.6% in his last 5 starts.
I am a big proponent of finding the answers in the statistics, but in order to parse Kirk Cousins' 2024 season, the stats need to be broken down into smaller pieces. On the surface, it would appear a typical Cousins' season...4000+ yards passing with a 67% completion rate, if the numbers are extrapolated to 17 starts. And, if one extrapolates the stats from the first 4 mediocre games and the 5 great ones, you would have ended up with 17 game totals of 32 TDs and 13 INTs, which also would have been typical of a Cousins year. So, it was typical Cousins in some ways, but a very inconsistent season all around, punctuated by the worst 5 games as a group in his entire career.
Add to it that the rest of the Falcons team is inconsistent, too, outside of the running back room and the specialists. The defense is better, overall, and the "bend, don't break" philosophy worked okay for them, most of the time. There were also times where the D looked genuinely capable of being counted on to win a game. They had 9 games within which they gave up less than their season average of 24 points per game and went 5-4 in those games, with all four of the losses being withing one score at the end.
Kyle Pitts is a yards per reception machine but often seems to be missing in action. Or perhaps misused, as he is often lined up at WR, against a nickel corner. He should be playing inside where he has a height AND speed advantage over any LB covering him, as opposed to just a height advantage that he has outside. As great as his talent seems to be, his best season was still his first season, with Matt Ryan throwing to him. Atlanta has a 5th year option at $10 million plus for 2025, which would make him the 6th highest paid TE in the league. While I think that is a reasonable contract for that one year, if his trend in play continues, I would seriously consider letting him walk in his free agent year. And, as a point of comparison, Drake London's statistics have gotten better in each season over the same time period and in the same offense as Pitts.
The defensive line and pass rushing were moribund for almost the entire year until the aforementioned streak of 21 sacks in 5 games. And while the defense seemed to be pretty clutch early in the season, they often looked tired as the season wore on and didn't seem capable of making a stand when the game was on the line. Still better than in recent years, but not great, overall.
Ultimately, Atlanta will have Penix as their starter next year and Cousins will be gone. Put all financial considerations aside and, in my opinion, the best plan moving forward would be to start next training camp with a genuine QB competition between the two of them, as I believe that Cousins is not really done yet. But contract incentives that will kick in before then mean that Cousins will be released. I just hope that Michael Penix, Jr. is ready to take an improving team into the playoffs. An early look at the 2025 schedule shows a decent possibility of 9 wins IF the Falcons can pick off a home win against Miami, Seattle, the LA Rams or Buffalo and 8 if they can't. And eight wins likely won't cut it for Penix's future as a starter unless he plays lights out.
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