not using a rookie starter immediately<\/a>, per NFL.com.<\/p>\n“Ideally, you don’t want him to start from Day 1,” Kubiak said Tuesday. “You’d love him to be able to learn behind somebody. That’s in a perfect world. It doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes they have to play from Day 1, and it’s our job as coaches to get them ready to go. I think it does help the player if they can sit behind a mature adult and watch how they run the show.”<\/p>\n
That sentiment makes it seems likely Cousins will open the 2026 NFL season as the Raiders\u2019 starter. That could change depending on how both players perform in training camp and in the preseason, but Cousins looks to have a leg up on Mendoza for now.<\/p>\n
Cousins opened last season in a backup role for the Atlanta Falcons behind Michael Penix Jr. But an injury to Penix opened the door for Cousins to shift back into a starting role down the stretch. In 10 games \u2013 eight starts \u2014 Cousins threw 10 touchdowns against five interceptions.<\/p>\n
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After considering his options during the offseason, Cousins ultimately landed with the Raiders. The move could give him one more shot to prove himself as a starting quarterback in the NFL, though it seems unlikely he\u2019ll remain in that role for long with Mendoza likely waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kirk Cousins\u2019 time as an NFL starter isn\u2019t over just yet. The 37-year-old reportedly signed a deal with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2065],"tags":[390,254,3619,7,294,8357,1744,393,2455,2454,58,259,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-849402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-arizona-cardinals","9":"tag-atlanta-falcons","10":"tag-fernando-mendoza","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-kirk-cousins","13":"tag-klint-kubiak","14":"tag-las-vegas","15":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","16":"tag-lasvegas","17":"tag-lasvegasraiders","18":"tag-los-angeles-rams","19":"tag-minnesota-vikings","20":"tag-nfl","21":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116335631838367358","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849402","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=849402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}