Kirk Cousins chose Las Vegas because it’s his best chance to play

Yahoo Sports host Andrew Siciliano, senior NFL reporter Jori Epstein and senior betting analyst Ben Fawkes react to the Las Vegas Raiders signing QB Kirk Cousins. Check out the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

When I was talking to people about this over the last few weeks before he signed, there was this idea of oh, well, Kirk will wait on Pittsburgh to see if Aaron Rodgers is going there because that would be his best chance to start otherwise if they decided to sign him, and there was kind of this conversation of it wasn’t that Kirk had no options.

He had to decide what he most cared about, of how much money he made, was he playing for a contender, if he wanted to actually get playing time, and ideally for him, starting time.

And so I think clearly he, he picked the starting time and maybe some degree of the money over the contender.

But I do think that as much as we can say, “Oh, he’s gonna be Fernando’s mentor,” he’s not going there to be a mentor.

I’m not saying he won’t help the guy out a little bit, and I’m not saying that there’s not a lot you can learn from Kirk Cousins.

I think there’s a ton you can learn from Kirk Cousins, but whether it’s Ryan Tannehill in recent years, whether it’s Joe Flacco in recent years, these veteran quarterbacks’ primary goal is not to mentor a guy.

They wanna play, and that’s why they’re still doing this.

They’re not leaving their families and devoting all these hours to keeping their body right for the primary purpose of mentoring.

So even if there is probably some degree of realism for Kirk Cousins that they’re ultimately just using him as a bridge, if that, to get to Fernando Mendoza, I don’t think that’s what he’s going for.

From Fernando Mendoza’s side, I really like this because I think that this takes the pressure off him to be ready immediately.

We’ve seen a lot of quarterbacks who are put out there too soon, and they didn’t have it.

I do think that sorry.

You’re good.

I do think that I made it so long.

I do think that with Tyler Linderbaum at center, I feel better about Mendoza starting in the first half of the season than I would have otherwise, and I’ve also been wrong before in the sense of Drake May and the Patriots.

I thought they should not put that guy out there anywhere near as early as they did because of how bad the offensive line was, and then it turned out he was a little more ready and got, good reps despite the fact that they weren’t winning games.

But I, I just view this as kind of like a okay, you have a team where you have options here, and I agree with you, Andrew, that if Mendoza lights it up in preseason and they feel great, they’ll probably put him out there week one.

But I don’t know.

I think it kinda could go both ways.

This is also not someone in Mendoza who’s got like five years of great college starting.

I, I don’t know.

I think there’s kind of an element of he really came on the scene primarily in his last year, which means you might wanna see it a little longer.

Kirk Cousins chose Las Vegas because it’s his best chance to play

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