Signing Kirk Cousins wasn’t the problem as much as it was everything else

What is it like to sink $100 million into an investment and get virtually nothing in return?

Arthur Blank knows the answer to that question.

It was April 1, 2025, in Palm Beach, Florida. The NFL annual meeting at the posh Breakers resort. In a small conference room with a handful of media members, I asked Blank that question about the Falcons signing Kirk Cousins for that nine-digit sum and then putting him in the back seat behind Michael Penix Jr. less than a year later.

The question and answer gained finality Wednesday with the team’s release of Cousins after two fruitless seasons in a Falcons uniform.

I asked out of curiosity more than anything else. I figured it was probably not quite the same as the time I was in middle school and used my lawn-mowing money to buy a stack of Scott Bankhead rookie baseball cards, a speculative investment that unfortunately never left the ground floor. (I think I still have them somewhere if you’d like to make an offer.)

“I think you make investments in lots of situations,” Blank said. “I’ve never been a risk-averse kind of person. It was very thoughtful. The plan was an excellent plan from our standpoint and I think from Kirk’s standpoint.

“He made a wise financial investment and an investment in a good franchise, I think. I think the team had it very well thought out and it ended up not being that way. If we played Tampa Bay every week last year (2024), he’d be in the Hall of Fame now.”

You’ll remember that, in that first season, Cousins torched the Buccaneers for eight touchdown passes in two games, nearly half his season total.

Someday, I want to be in a position where I can essentially feed $100 million into a shredder and make light of it. Really, I’d settle for $100,000. (OK, $1,000.)

As lamentable as the Cousins era was, intrinsically connected to the failed tenure of Raheem Morris, the decision to sign Cousins was not the problem. It was more everything that surrounded it.

Think back to Cousins’ hope-inspiring first half of the 2024 season. The Falcons were 6-3. Cousins had won NFC Offensive Player of the Week twice in October. Returning from his torn Achilles, he was a candidate for Comeback Player of the Year.

And then the Falcons played the Saints in New Orleans, and Cousins had his upper body rearranged on a strip-sack.

Things were never the same after that.

(Looking back at video of the sack, it’s remarkable in that right tackle Kaleb McGary lost his balance and apparently fell without getting touched, giving Saints defensive end Payton Turner a free path to mangle Cousins’ right shoulder and elbow. It was like someone had outfitted McGary’s left cleat with ball bearings. If you want to believe the Falcons are cursed, add that to your pile of evidence.)

A what-if that will never have an answer is, “What if McGary had merely managed to stay upright long enough to keep Turner off Cousins?” It’s hardly unreasonable to think that the Falcons would have continued their pace, won the division and ended their playoff drought. (You could also argue that Cousins, then 36, might have met a similar fate later in the season.)

Maybe the Falcons would have made the playoffs two consecutive times. The $100 million investment in Cousins would look completely different. Likely, for better or worse, the team of Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot would still be in place.

But the injury changed everything. As we learned later, Cousins was in no shape to continue to play. But with rookie Penix waiting in the wings, he downplayed the severity of the injury in order to stay on the field. Compounding Cousins’ act of self-interest, Morris waited too long to bench him.

Then, after Penix’s promising performance in Cousins’ place, Morris made the decision to stick with Penix going into 2025, ending Cousins’ time as franchise quarterback after 14 starts. Perhaps not ready for the full-time job and lacking better coaching, Penix was inconsistent before suffering his season-ending knee injury.

In hindsight, would the Falcons have been better off adhering to their original plan and sticking with Cousins as the starter this past season?

Probably.

But for the injury and then a series of ill-fated decisions after it, who knows how things might have turned out.

So it goes with the Falcons, now under new leadership and now officially without Cousins.