Breaking down the Kirk Cousins contract for the Falcons

The Falcons are prizing short-term flexibility and winning with this deal.

The Atlanta Falcons have signed Kirk Cousins, barring a dramatic last minute reversal before free agency actually kicks off on Wednesday. With the talented passer landing a reported four year, $180 million deal, naturally fans were keen to see the structure and whether this was actually a four year contract or a shorter one.

Now we have the terms and the structure defined, thanks to Spotrac, and can dive in to understand what the Falcons actually gave Cousins. Let’s do so right now.

First, here’s the actual structure at a high level.

2024: $25 million cap hit

2025: $40 million cap hit

2026: $57.5 million cap hit ($25 million dead money)

2026: $57.5 million cap hit ($12.5 million dead money)

So what do we know about this contract?

It’s effectively a two year deal

In year one, Cousins is going to be counting against the cap to the tune of $25 million. That number is likely to settle out as a middle-of-the-road cap hit somewhere between 14th-18th among NFL quarterbacks. Given that the Falcons will expect Cousins to play like a borderline top 10 player, something he was on track to do last year, that’s a very reasonable hit.

That 2025 number balloons, but will be closer to the 10th highest hit than the 5th highest when all is said and done, and the Falcons figure to have more cap space to play with next year. The net effect is that the Falcons are paying Cousins quite well but not at, say, a top five level in 2024 and 2025, when they clearly expect to field a contending team. Cousins’ hits will make it easier to do that.

The two $57.5 million cap hits and the dramatic decrease in dead money in 2026 and 2027 tell you the Falcons are treating this contract like a two year deal. That’s wise, given that Cousins will be 38 years old by 2026, and we’ll talk more about that in a moment.

The Falcons are prizing short-term success and flexibility

This should be obvious, given the above, but the Falcons will worry about winning right now and worry about Cousins’ replacement and their cap picture beginning in 2026. They’ll have several contracts coming off the books that year and an opportunity to escape Cousins’ deal if they want to, but that’s a problem for Future Terry Fontenot.

I’ve written this before and will write it again, but this franchise is hellbent on winning now. Arthur Blank is getting older and has now seen his team lose in six straight seasons, so he’s not on board with muddling through more mediocre ones. Fontenot kept his job in the front office but won’t survive another couple seasons of middling play from the Falcons. And Morris didn’t work his way rung by rung up to the head coaching ranks again to coach a lousy team that’s going to get him fired in the next three seasons. There’s alignment from to-to-bottom here and the message is obvious: The Falcons should be a winning football team, they should be a playoff team, and they should at least be moving toward being one of the NFC’s toughest outs.

That’s both why the Falcons signed Cousins and why they’ve structured the deal they way they have. Cousins was the best quarterback available in free agency and the most established, as well as the kind of accurate, capable, work-within-the-system quarterback new offensive coordinator Zac Robinson wanted in Atlanta. By giving him a middle-of-the-road cap hit in 2024 and an expensive but not top 5 hit in 2025, the Falcons are keeping enough cap space to bolster the team around him and set themselves up to push hard to win the NFC South the next two seasons, the window they’re invested in at the moment. You can question whether giving Cousins this much money at his age and fresh off an Achilles is a wise investment—I’m not fretting the way many Falcons fans are, but I have my legitimate concerns—but the Falcons have built this contract to ensure the dollars aren’t an albatross in 2024 and 2025.

That third year won’t be intact in 2026

There’s no way the Falcons will go into 2026 set to pay $57.5 million against the cap for Cousins, even if the cap rises to something ridiculous like $300 million. The ballooning salary tells you the Falcons put that particular thorny problem off until tomorrow, but that they’re fully aware they’ll need to deal with it then.

The team will head into that offseason with three options:

• Cut Cousins. If there’s any decline in 2025, the Falcons will hold their nose and eat $25 million against the cap to just cut ties with the veteran quarterback. If they have a young player coming in, paying a nominal salary plus Cousins’ $25 million is really not an unreasonable number, especially if they have a semi-affordable backup plan. They’ll then have a much more manageable $12.5 million dead money hit in 2027 before Cousins is off the books entirely in 2028.
• Restructure the deal. If Cousins is still playing well and the Falcons want him around, most of the guaranteed money is done with by year three and the team can tack on another year, shuffle things around, and generally do what it takes to lower that cap hit to $40 million or less again. They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it, but it’s an option.
• Pay Cousins the full amount. This is unlikely bordering on impossible, given how significant the cap hit would be, and it would require the team having a rosy cap picture, viewing Cousins as an integral piece of the 2026 puzzle, and wanting to save any restructuring or cut options until 2027. I don’t think this happens.

Your money should be on Cousins either playing elsewhere (or retiring, I suppose) in 2026 or playing under a restructured contract. The Falcons will cross that bridge when they come to it, because again, the money in the first two years is much more reasonable.

Cousins can’t be traded

It’s not at all unexpected, but Cousins has a full no-trade clause. If somehow things went sour and Cousins wanted out, he could waive it for a suitor of his choosing, but it’s unlikely the Falcons will get to that point before 2026 and that any team would want to take on his cap hits at age 38. Don’t expect the team to flip him during the life of this contract, just in case that scenario should present itself for some reason in the next couple of years.

What are your thoughts about Cousins’ contract structure?