Sean McVay and Kirk Cousins go all the way back to the quarterback\u2019s rookie season with the Redskins in 2012 and the Rams are open to a reunion this year if L.A. doesn\u2019t make an agreement with Jimmy Garoppolo. On Monday, McVay said that the Rams would like to have Cousins as Matthew Stafford\u2019s backup if the team doesn\u2019t work it out with Jimmy Garoppolo.<\/p>\n
McVay cited Cousins as \u201cinfluential\u201d in his ability to get the Rams head coaching job in 2017 and that the quarterback is also considering other offers.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople make some of the connections with Kirk,\u201d McVay said. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t work out with Jimmy, that\u2019s definitely something that \u2014 Kirk is as influential as anybody in helping me get to L.A. in the first place. I know he\u2019s got some other options and some other suitors, but Jimmy and Kirk are guys that I\u2019d love to have back with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s surprising that Cousins has had no serious suitors after almost a month of free agency. It\u2019s not as though he\u2019d be a shoo-in to start for anybody, but there\u2019s no option to be a bridge starter for the Raiders or in a competition somewhere that\u2019s hurting at the position? The Rams could end up getting a rather significant discount on Cousins to be Stafford\u2019s backup if he has no offers to compete anywhere else.<\/p>\n
Thus far the Rams have shown no urgency to have a veteran backup for Stafford either. Stetson Bennett is the only other quarterback on the roster and McVay gave no indication that the Rams see him as a future starter or even as a current backup. Otherwise he could have simply said that L.A. was comfortable with Bennett.<\/p>\n
Cousins was benched for Michael Penix in 2024 and then ended up going 5-3 as Atlanta\u2019s starter in 2025. The Falcons still opted to release him and move forward with Penix. Cousins completed 61% of his passes and had 10 touchdowns with five interceptions last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean McVay and Kirk Cousins go all the way back to the quarterback\u2019s rookie season with the Redskins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[223,254,2554,224,7,7841,294,32,18665,55,6,424,3307,471,3416],"class_list":["post-843141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-atlanta-falcons","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-atlantafalcons","tag-falcons","tag-football","tag-jimmy-garoppolo","tag-kirk-cousins","tag-matthew-stafford","tag-michael-penix","tag-new-orleans-saints","tag-nfl","tag-rams","tag-sean-mcvay","tag-stetson-bennett","tag-the-rams"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116318975073045008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843141","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=843141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}