{"id":736896,"date":"2026-02-08T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T01:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/736896\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T01:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T01:00:18","slug":"falcons-reportedly-will-release-kirk-cousins-before-new-league-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/736896\/","title":{"rendered":"Falcons reportedly will release Kirk Cousins before new league year"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I wrote back on January 6<\/a>, Atlanta\u2019s contract adjustment for Kirk Cousins indicated that they were going to cut him, given that they would have a truly unpalatable cap hit next year if they did not. Now Adam Schefter is reporting that the Falcons are planning to do so before the start of the new league year, likely as a post-June 1 designation, a move that will give the team a bit more cap space now and save quite a bit next year. Cousins will be free to seek a starting job somewhere, with the Minnesota Vikings and their J.J. McCarthy conundrum seemingly making them a quality landing spot.<\/p>\n

Again, this is just Schefter quasi-confirmation of something we already knew, given the numbers involved. If the team decided to hold on to Cousins for any reason, they\u2019d either eat closer to a $70 million cap charge in 2027 or have to substantially re-tool the deal, sending waves of money crashing into future seasons when they\u2019d surely like to have the flexibility.<\/p>\n

Cousins, who will be 38 this coming season, finishes his time in Atlanta with a 12-10 record, a single game record for passing yardage, three stellar games against the Buccaneers, and a mixed track record against everyone else. He wasn\u2019t great aside from a handful of games and wasn\u2019t terrible aside from an ugly stretch late in 2024, but the Falcons signed him hoping he would pilot them to the playoffs for at least two years and that did not happen. Both the team and the player will likely be glad to have this era come to an end soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As I wrote back on January 6, Atlanta\u2019s contract adjustment for Kirk Cousins indicated that they were going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2074],"tags":[223,254,2591,2554,224,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-736896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-falcons","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-falcons","10":"tag-atlanta-falcons-news","11":"tag-atlantafalcons","12":"tag-falcons","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116032308749930833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}