It felt all too fitting that this exact Kirk Cousins game happenned in Minnesota. On a day where the Atlanta Falcons moved the ball fairly well (53.4% Success Rate would be third among all NFL teams from Week 14, even above the Bills and Rams, 496 total yards of offense), they still lose 42-21 to the Minnesota Vikings on the backs of a muffed kick by WR Ray-Ray McCloud and two Kirk Cousins interceptions.
With the loss, the Falcons lose the division lead to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who beat the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. For a team with hopes of a deep playoff run, they’re now on the brink of elimination because of inconsistent offensive play.
I want to focus specifically on the offense and Cousins here, because that’s been the major problem throughout this losing streak. Cousins leads the NFL in interceptions this year and generally hasn’t looked at all like the QB the Falcons were expecting when they signed him to a $180 million deal in the offseason. It’s equally frustrating because outside of QB play, the Falcons’ offense has been good this year! Running backs Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier have played well, WR Darnell Mooney is playing at a high level, and they’re getting quality play up front. It, quite literally, is the QB potentially holding this team from making the playoffs.
So what’s gone wrong for Cousins in Atlanta during this four game skid? Well, it’s the same problem the Falcons faced when they started the season slowly: Kirk can’t move, and it’s limiting what the offense wants to be. The reason this is so huge, is because of where Falcons’ offensive coordinator Zac Robinson came from and what he wants to be. Coming from the Rams, where bootleg action was a large part of how they built off of the run schemes. However, Atlanta can’t really access that, because Kirk can’t move at all.
Cousins was never a spring chicken, but since the Achilles injury he’s essentially been a statue. Outside of the Vikings game, Cousins has nine dropbacks that are tagged by Sports Information Solutions as designed rollouts. In comparison, QB Matthew Stafford has 47 for the Rams, the second most in the entire league. Not being able to access this part of their offense has done major damage to the functionality, and forced Cousins to do more work 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 play action for Stafford on 25% of their dropbacks in 2023 with Robinson as the pass game coordinator. This 8% drop is a massive thing for the Falcons and Cousins, who succeeded the most in Minnesota with heavy play action (33% play action usage with Cousins in Minnesota in 2023, 31% in 2022).
Even when the Falcons use play action, this season Cousins has been so inconsistent throwing downfield that he’s forcing turnovers that his body is telling him not to throw. On his first interception against Minnesota, his body is telling him to just dirt this ball (he even pump fakes!). But his brain tells him to go for it and he throws the ball right to Josh Metellus. Can’t do anything with this.
So now that we got that established, we get to the issue with having Kirk do more standard dropback stuff is that he becomes a pin cushion when he can’t move. The Falcons are blitzed 22% of the time when Cousins drops back to pass, and when Cousins is pressured, bad things normally happen. His interception rate of 7.8% when pressured is first in the NFL among 36 qualifying passers, and it isn’t close.
He’s become a problem because he’s not beating the blitz with his mind, nor is he using his legs to mitigate pressure. So what is he bringing to the Falcons?
So, that brings us back to the original question: where do the Atlanta Falcons go from here? My colleague Matt Warren wrote about how Atlanta can’t get off the Cousins contract this year and have to wait until a potential void after the 2025 season, so they’re stuck with Cousins for now. Drafting QB Michael Penix Jr honestly looks smarter in this situation, knowing you have your next guy if 2025 is the last year we see Cousins in a Falcons’ jersey.
However, the Falcons need to get Cousins using play action and moving more, and if he can’t, put in the quarterback who will.
