RandBall: The fast and terrible fall of Kirk Cousins

Barely a year ago in late October, Kirk Cousins was playing some of the best football of his entire career. The Vikings were putting the finishing touches on an impressive win at Green Bay, with Cousins throwing for 274 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

He was up to 18 TDs and just five interceptions on the season, helping the Vikings rally from a 1-4 start to pull even at 4-4. But he took an awkward step late in that fateful Oct. 29 game, rupturing his Achilles.

It was the start of a whirlwind 12 months for Cousins. The Vikings, craving QB cost control and perhaps skittish about trusting a 36-year-old coming off such a major injury, parlayed the high draft pick snared in part by finishing 7-10 without Cousins into selecting his eventual successor J.J. McCarthy.

They had already let Cousins go to Atlanta in free agency, unwilling to match the multiyear commitment the Falcons made, while signing Sam Darnold ostensibly as a one-year insurance policy. In that same draft, six weeks after signing Cousins, the Falcons stunned a lot of people (none perhaps more than Cousins) by selecting quarterback Michael Penix Jr. No. 8 overall.

But the awkward arrangement appeared to have smoothed itself out over the course of the first half of the season. Cousins was the clear starter, even if Penix was the QB-in-waiting. Cousins, indeed, seemed to have reached the peak of an impressive comeback almost exactly one year to the day after his Achilles injury.

And then, suddenly, it all fell apart again — this time for much different reasons, as I talked about on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast in the wake of Cousins’ getting benched by the Falcons.

If you paid attention to Cousins only at the start of this season, when he delivered a clunker against the Steelers, or lately during his increasingly poor run of games, you might think the benching was destined to happen.

The reality is that Cousins as of Nov. 3 was having a typically solid season and one that the Falcons were probably enjoying. He had just delivered the second of back-to-back excellent games, throwing for seven touchdowns and no interceptions while completing almost 80% of his passes in wins over Tampa Bay and Dallas.

The Falcons were 6-3 and cruising in the mediocre NFC South. Cousins had thrown 17 touchdowns with seven interceptions at that point. From there, though, this is what happened:

During that span Cousins threw just one touchdown (Monday over the Raiders) with nine interceptions. On Tuesday morning, Falcons coach Raheem Morris gave a tepid response when asked if Cousins was still his guy. But Tuesday night, Morris released a statement making things far more clear: “After review we have made the decision Michael Penix will be the Atlanta Falcons starting quarterback moving forward.”

Cousins, who counts consistency and durability among his finer traits, had not been benched in a decade. Back then, it was Colt McCoy taking over for him in Washington in 2014.

It leaves the Falcons with all sorts of questions, the main one being, “What are we going to do with an aging, ineffective QB who is owed $27.5 million in 2025 and will be an albatross on the salary cap no matter what?”

Even in a best-case scenario, which appears to be getting Cousins to waive his no-trade clause and finding a team in 2025 that thinks he’s worth a one-year gamble, they would have paid $62.5 million for one very mediocre year of Cousins while still taking a $37.5 million cap hit next season.

It also leaves Cousins with a question: “What is my future?” Star Tribune Vikings writer Ben Goessling and I explored that in a video Wednesday, mulling options that include the Falcons cutting him and a QB-needy team (maybe even the Vikings) scooping him for a minimum salary in 2025.

If anything, this second hard fall for Cousins has been more shocking than the one a year ago. An injury is one thing. Coming back from it, seeming to regain your form and then having a season fall apart so dramatically and so suddenly, as Cousins theoretically should be getting stronger the more removed he is from his injury, is not what many of us would have imagined.

It’s not “Kirktober” any more, and there’s no guarantee it ever will be again.