Much of the talk this week surrounding the Falcons following a third straight loss is focused on Kirk Cousins and his future with the team. Raheem Morris tried to put all of that to rest with his comments in last Sunday’s postgame press conference.
“We won’t make any excuses for them. That guy has carried us all season, he’s done such a marvelous job. It’s hard to throw that guy under the bus. We’ll bounce back, bring him back and we’ll be ready to go,” Morris said of Kirk Cousins.
At this point, Morris is doing damage control. He and Terry Fontenot led the charge in recruiting Kirk Cousins to Atlanta, inking him to a four-year, $180 million contract. Nothing about that deal looks good today. Cousins hasn’t thrown a touchdown pass since Week 9, the longest stretch of his career he’s gone without throwing a touchdown. He has six interceptions over his last three games, putting him at 12 for the season, which leads the NFL.
In fact, unless Cousins is playing the Buccaneers, he’s been downright dreadful. In two games versus Tampa Bay, he’s thrown eight touchdowns to just one interception. In the other ten games, he has just nine touchdowns compared to eleven interceptions.
So, Raheem Morris can toot the horn for Cousins as much as he’d like, but facts are facts. The Kirk Cousins experiment has been an unmitigated disaster through the first 12 games of the season.
There’s now a real case for Michael Penix Jr. to take over for the Falcons as the starting quarterback. Cousins might give Atlanta the best chance to win right now, but at what cost? This isn’t a Super Bowl caliber roster, and Penix is the future. These final five games could be massive for his development heading into next year. That could soon become the Falcons’ primary focus, and Penix says he’ll be ready when his number is called.
“I’m ready. I have to be because you never know when that opportunity will come, but at the end of the day, it’s not up to me. I just have to continue to be ready for that moment,” Penix said via Josh Kendall of The Athletic on X/Twitter.
It’s undoubtedly a difficult decision for Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot to navigate, but this is exactly what everyone pointed to when the Falcons signed Kirk Cousins to a four-year contract and then drafted Michael Penix Jr. a few weeks later. The Falcons made this mess; now they’ve got to figure out a way to keep this ship from crashing.
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Photographer: Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire
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