Over his last four games, Kirk Cousins has thrown eight interceptions. Arguably nine, if you want to count the ball Drake London and Fabian Moreau went to the ground with equal possession of in the third quarter of Sunday’s game with the Minnesota Vikings.
In that same span, he has zero touchdowns. He’s been sacked eight times and put the ball on the turf four more, though each of those fumbles were recovered by his offense.
Not coincidentally, the Atlanta Falcons are 0-4 in that stretch. They’ve gone from a two-game lead over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC South and a top three playoff seed after Week 10 to second place in the division and two games out of a Wild Card spot with only four Sundays left in the season.
ONE HAND ARE YOU KIDDING ME @byronmurphy 😱😱
📺: @NFLonFOX pic.twitter.com/eWHDOUl3Mk
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) December 8, 2024
This is all shocking and, somehow, expected. Cousins has spent the last seven years playing for the NFC’s most cursed franchises in exceedingly familiar ways. As a Viking, that meant doling out plates of regular season success just to starve in the playoffs. As a Falcon, it’s meant complete implosion in the face of optimism.
Cousins hasn’t fallen apart in a vacuum. He was a roller coaster unto himself to start the season. His lack of mobility coming off 2023’s torn Achilles effectively made him a non-factor in Week 1’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. This was fine; he was recovering. And, indeed, a combination of better health and an offensive designed around his already diminishing mobility helped Atlanta thrive.
Between Weeks 2 and 9, the Falcons went 6-2 with only losses to the Kansas City Chiefs and Seattle Seahawks to dent their grace. Cousins looked like the veteran savior he was meant to be. In two games against the Buccaneers alone he threw for nearly 800 yards and eight touchdowns. He threw three touchdowns without an interception against the Dallas Cowboys.
The Falcons were 6-3. Cousins had a passer rating of 106.1. In the eight games following his stinker of an opener, his 0.209 expected points added (EPA) per dropback were sixth-best in the NFL. He was an MVP candidate — not in line to win, but good enough to earn a few votes if he could maintain that pace.
Kirk Cousins could not maintain that pace.
.@NoExcuses_23 picks off Kirk!
📺: @NFLonFOX pic.twitter.com/TRHGMkajl2
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) December 8, 2024
The issues are myriad, but many stem from the combination of last year’s injury and the fact he’s now 36 years old. He’s been a sitting duck in the pocket, and while that hasn’t resulted in more sacks — his 5.7 percent sack rate is actually better than it was most years in Minnesota — it’s created an impetus to make poor decisions and rushed throws downfield.
You can see that in the clip above. With the walls crashing around him, Cousins has the veteran gravitas to move up in the pocket but rushes the throw, blanking Josh Metellus waiting underneath in the process. This isn’t new; even when Cousins is nimble enough to escape pressure he’s seemingly doing so at the cost of his own sanity.
welcome to la, marcus maye
📺 | @nfloncbs pic.twitter.com/Azos8sSToq
— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) December 1, 2024
Scrambling was never something on which Cousins could reliably lean, but it was a tool he could use in a pinch. That hasn’t been the case in 2024. Per Pro Football Reference, he’s scrambled for a gain just twice in 13 games this season. So while Atlanta’s line has done a good job protecting him he’s been unable to maximize that relative lack of pressure.
Further complicating things is his inability to work efficiently out of play action sets. Cousins used fake handoffs to start more than 31 percent of his pass plays in 2023 — a season in which he put up a Pro Bowl pace over eight games. In 2024, that’s down to 14 percent, per NFL Pro.
He’s got one of the league’s top tailback tandems in Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier, so we know it’s not an issue with shoddy runs and defenses that won’t be fooled. The Falcons are clearly concerned about Cousins’s ability to drop back in space, scan the field, step up and exploit the gaps created when a safety or linebacker crashes a split-second too early toward the line of scrimmage.
That leads us to our second problem. Cousins isn’t finding space downfield.
His on-target throw rate is roughly on par with where it had been as a Viking. His tight window rate, however, has shot up from 13.8 percent to 20.8 percent this fall. He’s traded easy throws for tough ones. The combination of increased coverage and whatever zip may be missing from his passes as a man in his late 30s overcoming a significant injury has created a vortex that’s turned him into a turnover machine.
Opponents have figured this out. They don’t need to blitz him, because if one member of a four man rush can beat his blocker that’s capable of doing enough to throw Cousins into panic mode without an easy way out. A 31 percent blitz rate in 2023 has dipped to 20.3 in 2024. Over the last four games, two teams (the Chargers and Saints) blitzed him less than 13 percent of the time despite a deluge of passing downs for a trailing offense.
Big time player Chase Young
📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/egaS2xTFmK
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) November 10, 2024
That creates more defenders in the second level, more of the tight window throws that don’t have the same success they used to and, crucially, more opportunities to create turnovers against an offense punching way, way below its weight class. By those powers combined, you get plays like this.
THE HONEY BADGER TAKES WHAT HE WANTS.
📺 FOX pic.twitter.com/EW3gy44UtU
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) November 10, 2024
The upside of Cousins’s struggles is their ability to make at least one of Atlanta’s offseason decisions look good. The Falcons drafted Michael Penix with the eighth pick of the first round in April, giving the franchise a potential building block for the future — albeit one who is already 24 years old.
The downside is, well, Cousins’s contract effectively leaves him on the roster through the end of 2025. Head coach Raheem Morris’s decision to stick with his struggling veteran could be a preview of things to come as Penix, who only has five NFL passes to his name despite the surrounding pestilence in the Atlanta offense, slowly works his way toward a starting job.
Morris has planned around Cousins’s limitations before. The difference making and missing the 2024 playoffs will depend on his ability to do it again. Defenses know how to bother Cousins, and it’s a blueprint almost anyone can follow. Modest pressure creates major mistakes, and that’s been all the leverage opponents have needed in a four-game losing streak.
Unless a fix is coming soon, that could spell the end of a once optimistic season in Georgia.
