Florio: Kirk Cousins’ Camp ‘Keeping an Eye’ on the Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers have been linked to just about every quarterback in the offseason, and free agency is still over a month away. Justin Fields is the popular name as of late, but Ryan Tannehill, Russell Wilson, and others have had their names floated around.

But the latest is now Kirk Cousins. Appearing on 93.7 the Fan, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, revealed that he has talked to people close to Cousins who believe that the Steelers would be an excellent fit, and there seems to be interest in that move.

“I was talking to some people last week who seem to be intrigued at the possibility of the Steelers making a play for Kirk Cousins,” Florio said. “And those people were very to if not within the Kirk Cousins camp. There’s an acknowledgement that it could happen. The Falcons and the Steelers are the two teams that I think the Cousins camp is keeping an eye on.”

According to Charley Walters of the Pioneer Press, Cousins wants $90 million guaranteed in a two-year contract.

“Buzz now is that it will take $90 million guaranteed for two years, despite that he’s still not yet fully recovered from Achilles surgery in November, to sign [Cousins],” Walters wrote.

Pittsburgh did clear some cap space with the releases of Mitch Trubisky and Chuks Okorafor. Okorafor was the big move, opening up $8.75 million in cap space, while Trubisky’s release saved the team about $2.9 million. Harvin, who was still on his rookie contract, did not contribute much cap savings in his release. After roster displacement, the Steelers are are still about $5.4 million over the salary cap heading into free agency, so they still have work to do to get salary cap compliant.

In addition to their current offseason deficiency, the Steelers will need to clear up nearly another $20 million between March and the start of the season in order to sign their rookie class, a practice squad, account for players on injured reserve and other moves that must happen before the start of the season. All told, the Steelers are still functionally about $24.4 million over the cap after Monday’s moves.

That makes a deal with Cousins very unlikely, though there would always be workarounds that they could employ. But given all the comments this offseason so far, a guy like Cousins coming in seems unlikely.