It felt only too fitting that this very Kirk Cousins game happened in Minnesota. Even on days when the Atlanta Falcons moved the ball pretty well (their 53.4% success rate in Week 14 was better than the Bills and Rams, and their 496 yards of total offense ranked third among all NFL teams) – Lost to the Falcons 42-21. The Minnesota Vikings came back with a muffled kick from WR RayRay McLeod and two interceptions from Kirk Cousins.
With this loss, the Falcons lose their division lead to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who defeated the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. The team is expected to make the playoffs, but their lack of consistency on offense has put them on the brink of elimination.
I want to focus specifically on the offense and Cousins here. Because that was the big problem during this losing streak. Cousins leads the NFL in interceptions this year, but he looks nothing like the QB the Falcons expected when they signed him to a $180 million contract in the offseason. It's equally frustrating because the Falcons' offense has been strong this year outside of QB play. Running backs Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgaier are playing well, and wide receiver Darnell Mooney is playing at a high level and showing quality up front. That's literally the QB potentially preventing this team from making the playoffs.
So what went wrong for Cousins in Atlanta during those four games of failure? Well, this is the same problem the Falcons faced when they started the season slowly. Kirk is stuck, limiting what the offense wants. The reason this is so big is because of where Falcons offensive coordinator Zach Robinson is coming from and what he wants to be. Coming from the Rams, bootleg action was a big part of building the run scheme. But Atlanta can't really access it because Kirk can't move at all.
Cousins was never a spring chicken, but since his Achilles injury, he's essentially become a statue. Outside of Vikings games, Cousins has nine dropbacks tagged as rollouts designed by Sports Information Solutions. By contrast, Rams QB Matthew Stafford has 47, the second-most in the entire league. Not having access to this part of the offense severely damaged the function, forcing Cousins to work more as a standard dropback passer. The Falcons use play action on 17% of their dropbacks with Cousins as the passer. For comparison, the Rams used Stafford's play-action on 25% of their dropbacks in 2023, with Robinson serving as their passing game coordinator. This 8% decrease is significant for the Falcons and Cousins, who has had the most success in Minnesota with heavy play-action (Cousins' play-action usage rate in Minnesota was 33% in 2023 and 31% in 2022). %).
Even when the Falcons use play-action, Cousins has been very inconsistent with his throws downfield this season, forcing turnovers and his body telling him not to throw. On his first interception against Minnesota, his body seems to be telling him to dart this ball (he's even pumping the fake!). But his brain told him to go for it, and he threw the ball to Josh Metellus. Nothing can be done with this.
Okay, now that that's established, the problem with having Kirk do a more standard dropback motion is that he becomes a pincushion when he can't move. When Cousins goes down for a pass, the Falcons get blitzed 22% of the time. When Cousins gets pressured, bad things usually happen. His 7.8% interception rate when pressured ranks first among 36 qualifying players in the NFL, but it's not even close.
He's a problem because he's not mentally able to beat the blitz and he's not using his legs to take the pressure off. So what does he bring to the Falcons?
So, back to the original question. Where do the Atlanta Falcons go from here?As my colleague Matt Warren notes, Atlanta is unable to sign Cousins' contract this year and will have to wait until the potential vacancy after the 2025 season. , wrote that they are sticking with Cousins' contract for now. Even if 2025 is the last year we see Cousins in a Falcons jersey, drafting QB Michael Penix Jr. honestly looks smart in this situation because we know there's a next guy up.
But the Falcons need to get Cousins to move more with play-action, and if they can't do that, they need to bring in a quarterback who does.
