Falcons expected to see significant penalty for Kirk Cousins tampering, per Adam Schefter

In a new story from ESPN, it’s indicated that we should brace for the team to lose draft compensation.

When Kirk Cousins seemingly admitted to the Atlanta Falcons having direct contact with him prior to the official start of free agency, it kicked off a league investigation into the team. That investigation appears to be close to wrapping up, and per ESPN insider Adam Schefter, it does not look like it will deliver good news for the Falcons.

It appears that the league found wrongdoing on Atlanta’s part—again, Cousins’ out-loud admission probably doomed them—and Schefter expects Atlanta’s punishment to involve draft compensation and be more “severe” than what the league is expected to hand out to the Philadelphia Eagles for an investigation involving contact with free agent running back Saquon Barkley.

It seems unlikely that the league will hand out a punishment for this year’s draft unless they’re taking the unusual measure of enforcing a pick swap with the Minnesota Vikings, the team ostensibly wronged by Atlanta’s early contact. A flip from No. 8 to No. 11 would give Minnesota a better chance of getting their quarterback of the future without causing grievous harm to Atlanta’s draft plans, but it seems doubtful the NFL would blow up this year’s draft planning for one or more franchises with less than a week to go until the draft actually starts. More than likely, Atlanta will lose a selection or two in the 2025 NFL Draft.

For a team with outstanding needs and an expensive quarterback contract now on the books, any pick lost is going to be problematic, but if it’s a first or second day selection or two it’s going to be extremely unwelcome. ESPN’s piece notes two recent examples, the most egregious being the Dolphins and their Sean Payton/Tom Brady tampering which lost the team a first and third round pick, but that was a far more sweeping example than what the Falcons allegedly got up to here. The Kansas City Chiefs lost a third and sixth round pick for tampering with Jeremy Maclin back in 2015, and that seems to be a more likely guideline for the league’s punishment in this instance. In both cases, those teams were hit with pick losses in following years, not the same year as the violation.

It’s worth remembering how this team got itself into hot water in the first place, given that teams are transparently tampering and contacting outside of the guardrails all the time without saying the quiet part out loud. During his introductory press conference, Cousins appeared to let slip that he had direct contact with the team’s athletic trainer before he could officially sign his deal, a big no-no that you’re not supposed to admit to.

“There’s great people here,” Cousins said. “And it’s not just the football team. I mean, I’m looking at the support staff. Meeting — calling, yesterday, our head athletic trainer, talking to our head of P.R., I’m thinking we’ve got good people here. And that’s exciting to be a part of.”

As our Jeanna Kelley wrote, the league likely looked into Kyle Pitts’ active recruitment of Cousins, something both Cousins and Pitts talked about openly, to see if Pitts was instructed to do so by anyone in the franchise or took it upon himself to do it, with the latter being fine and the former being a problem. If the league found any direct evidence that the team pushed Pitts to reach out, the penalty for Atlanta would likely be more severe; if not, it’s likely to be fairly weighty simply because Cousins’ admission and the league’s investigation likely made any illegal tampering (sigh) obvious.

Arthur Blank sounded a hopeful note in the immediate aftermath of the opening of the league’s investigation, but did note that the team would live with the results of that investigation.

“The tampering deal, we obviously don’t believe we tampered, and we shared all the information with the league…they’ll review the process and the facts and they are in the middle of doing that, and whatever the result is, we’ll deal with it.”

The net effect of a careless slip of the tongue on Cousins’ part may well be that the Falcons lose a valuable draft pick or two, effectively raising the cost of acquiring the free agent quarterback. The team is going to have to take that in stride and are very obviously thrilled to have Cousins in Atlanta, but they can ill afford to lose valuable draft picks just as things appeared to be looking up for this franchise. This will undoubtedly make the Falcons more careful going forward, but we ought to brace for the worst and hope it’s not too bad here.