Report: Potential Steelers QB Option Won’t Be Released Despite Desire to Be Moved
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins met with team owner Arthur Blank last week, expressing his desire to go to a team where he can start in the 2025 season, but it does not appear likely that he will be released.
Cousins, 36, signed a four-year, $180 million contract with the Falcons last year that included $100 million in guaranteed money, but things started to unravel between the former Washington Redskins and Minnesota Vikings quarterback and his new team quickly.
The Falcons stunned by using their first-round draft pick on Washington Huskies quarterback Michael Penix. Cousins rushed back from the Achilles injury that prematurely ended his final season with the Vikings, and struggled out of the gate in 2024, including in a Week 1 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, when he completed 16 of 26 passes for 155 yards, threw two interceptions compared to one touchdown, was sacked twice and posted a quarterback rating of 59.0.
Cousins led the NFL in interceptions in 2024, throwing 16 picks over the first 14 games before he was benched in favor of Penix in Week 16. Penix is expected to be the Falcons starting quarterback in 2025.
That leaves both the Falcons and Cousins in a lurch. Cousins is faced with the prospect of spending the final seasons of his career as Penix’s backup. The Falcons would be hard-pressed to move on from Cousins because of his contract.
A Cousins trade before June 1 would introduce a $37.5 million dead cap hit on Atlanta’s books this season — and a trading team would have to agree to the guarantees handed out by Atlanta. A release is even worse for the Falcons’ books, as that would cause Atlanta to eat a $65 million dead cap hit, and increase Cousins’ salary cap charge by $25 million — a non-starter with the Falcons already over the cap days before the start of the new league year.
The Pittsburgh Steelers might be interested in Cousins, if the has released and could get him on a similar deal to the one that Russell Wilson played under in 2024, but that does not seem likely before the Steelers self-imposed deadline of having a deal in place by the start of the free agency contact period on Monday afternoon.