Kirk Cousins wants to wait to accept a trade.
Kirk Cousins and the Atlanta Falcons look to be at a standstill as the quarterback wants to be a starter somewhere else, but the team will only do it if it benefits them. There are a lot of avenues the Falcons can take when trying to move on from Cousins, and apparently, he's telling other teams what he expects if they're offering a deal, according to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated.
“Rather than taking anyone’s word for it, Cousins has already signaled to teams that he would likely want to wait to see what happens over draft weekend before accepting a trade,” Breer wrote. “In a way, that should also work for the teams, allowing them to go through a full draft process—and make decisions on guys such as Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart independent of Cousins’s destination.
“There’s risk involved here, too, from Cousins’s side in that he’d probably be able to get at least a one-year commitment as a starter somewhere, ahead of a team deciding to draft a quarterback—and such opportunity could dry up after the draft.”
There are a few teams that could use the services of Cousins, but most of those teams already have high draft picks and could use them on a quarterback. It's uncertain if Cousins would want to walk into another situation like that after just dealing with the same thing on the Falcons.
Could the Falcons trade Kirk Cousins for the right price?
Related Atlanta Hawks NewsArticle continues below
Though it may sound easy to trade Cousins, it doesn't benefit the Falcons, especially if they have to take on most of his money in a deal.
“The other issue here is that Falcons owner Arthur Blank really doesn’t want to pay $90 million, or close to it, for a single year of Cousins,” Breer wrote. “That will affect how much of Cousins’s $27.5 million for 2025 the Falcons are willing to take on to facilitate a trade and essentially buy a draft pick back from the team acquiring Cousins.”
For the Falcons, they seem content with keeping Cousins on the roster as the backup quarterback. There could be a time during the season when a team has an injury to their quarterback, and they can reach out to the Falcons to see what the price is on Cousins. In that moment, his price might be as high as it's going to get, and the Falcons can benefit from that.
