Following a string a bad play the Falcons are going to move starting QB Kirk Cousins to the bench in favor of rookie Michael Penix, Jr.. Cousins signed a very questionable $46 million per year contract with the Falcons as a free agent that contained $100 million in guarantees despite coming off an Achilles injury the prior season. Now the contract looks like it will hang over the Falcons and tie up their salary cap for the next two years. Here is a look at the Falcons options with the contract.
Cousins counts for $40 million against the Falcons salary cap in 2025. Because the Falcons frontloaded his contract with $62.5 million being paid in 2024, his salary in 2025 is only $27.5 million. That salary is already fully guaranteed and is owed to Cousins whether cut or not. The cost to cut Cousins on the cap would be gigantic- $65 million in 2025.
The Falcons could choose to use the post June 1 designation option and cut Cousins right at the start oif the 2025 league year. This is similar to what the Broncos did with Russell Wilson this past season. If the Falcons did this Cousins’ cap hit would remain $40 million in 2025 and the team would then defer $25 million to 2026.
The difficulty with the first scenario for the Falcons is that in many ways they walked themselves back into a salary cap mess with various signings to try to compete for the NFC South. They are one of just six teams that projects to be over the cap in 2025 and upping Cousins’ cap charge by $25 million really compounds their issues with their cap. They have a few players who could be released for cap savings but they would likely be forced to double down on more players in 2025 and further complicate their flexibility in 2026.
Trading Cousins, which would eliminate $27.5 million in cap charges for 2025 and bring the cap cost of a trade down to $37.5 million is not an option without Cousins’ approval. The Falcons agreed to a no trade clause when they signed Cousins. Most QB needy teams are bad teams and it is possible that Cousins would not want to go to those teams. A team trading for Cousins would also have to commit to paying him $37.5 million in guaranteed salary which may not be a number that teams see as a good investment. Atlanta may have to pick up some salary if they went this route.
If Cousins is on the Falcons roster in 2025 as a backup he will earn a $10 million guarantee on his 2026 salary. That would bring the cost of cutting Cousins in 2026 up to $35 million from $25 million. That doesn’t seem like a smart choice either.
Looking at the financials and the team’s salary cap situation the move that makes the most sense is the post June 1 release next year. It keeps his 2025 cap number as is, wont make the team’s 2025 cap situation even worse, and prevents another $10 million from being guaranteed. His release would be a black eye on the Falcons organization with Atlanta having to pay Cousins $90 million for 1 partial season of work where they wound up benching him. This would go down as the worst free agent signing of all time, though barring a turnaround it is going to hold that distinction regardless of the contract outcome next year.
The drafting of Penix was controversial in light of the signing of Cousins, but it did at least give the Falcons an option with upside if the Cousins signing went awry, which it has. The danger of starting a rookie this late in the year is that if he looks bad in these final three games, and many rookies look bad early, is that it can further cloud a team’s judgement for the future. A bad three game run might lead to the Falcons being on the hook for that extra $10 million in guarantees and making other decisions to try to build a roster around an expensive and flawed QB. Even if he looks bad for one game and gets pulled it just intensifies all of the criticisms around the team and the decisions they made this year. This was a move that probably needed to be made a few weeks back when Cousins arm looked like it was done for the year.
At this point the Falcons need Penix to look good on the field and then use his low priced contract and upside to hide the fact that the team wasted all of this time and money on Cousins. Low priced rookies often help teams out of bad salary cap situations and this would be no different, giving the Falcons front office the out it needs to hide a pretty mismanaged situation.