After the Falcons shocked the football-following world by making quarterback Michael Penix Jr. the eighth overall pick in the 2024 draft, Cousins was asked by reporters whether he might have made a different decision in free agency if he’d known about the plan to take a quarterback.
“I don’t really deal in hypotheticals,” Cousins said at the time.
In the first episode of his second turn on the Quarterback series, he did.
After explaining that he picked Atlanta over Minnesota in free agency because the Vikings wanted to go “year-to-year” and the Falcons made a longer commitment, Cousins said he was “pretty surprised” by the news that Penix had been drafted in the top 10.
“I wasn’t expecting us to take a quarterback,” Cousins said. “At the time, it felt like I’d been a little bit misled — or certainly if I had the information around free agency, it certainly would have affected my decision. I had no reason to leave Minnesota with how much we loved it there, if both teams are gonna be drafting a quarterback high.”
Beyond loving Minnesota, Cousins was comfortable in Kevin O’Connell’s offense. It became clear during the first episode of Quarterback that Cousins felt a little overwhelmed by the offense in Atlanta.
“It’s different enough to feel like I’m starting over,” Cousins said regarding the Falcons offense.
One challenge came from the pre-snap motions and shifts, similar to what the Dolphins had been doing. “That was a lot to learn,” Cousins said.
It came to a head in Week 1, when a game-deciding fumble happened because of a miscommunication that resulted in a shotgun snap striking tight end Ross Dwelley, while he was going in motion past the center.
“I knew that was gonna happen,” Cousins said as he came off the field.
“I have to give the foot, then send you,” Cousins told Dwelley on the sideline. “I sent you and then gave the foot. And if I do that, we have no room for error. It’s a fumble every time. It was just — all week long, I was paranoid. I’m gonna do it one time and screw it up. And it did.”
It’s a tangible, and valuable, example for quarterbacks who are thinking about changing teams in the future. You never know what that team is going to do with its first-round pick. You never know how different the offense is going to be until you’re in it.
And you never know how it’s going to feel to line up “with a new team with a new system in a new home stadium” until it’s time to do it.
