Falcons Clips
Earlier this week, Kirk Cousins was supposedly taking his time. Just like that, he’s doing a deal with the Raiders.
He had options, obviously. The Rams were interested in him as the backup to Matthew Stafford, if Jimmy Garoppolo doesn’t return. The Packers were interested, too.
His decision to sign with the Raiders means that no clear-cut starting opportunity was available. The Cardinals apparently never came calling. The Steelers could have been a possibility, if Aaron Rodgers doesn’t play in 2026.
But the Raiders wanted a veteran. Coach Klint Kubiak said so on Tuesday. And Cousins becomes the bridge quarterback, turning his $10 million guarantee for 2026 into $20 million, when factoring in next year’s $10 million guaranteed roster bonus.
Cousins also may have had an offer from CBS. The Matt Ryan chair is open, and Cousins was excellent in his playoff assignment there. (Kyle Long was, too.)
Still, Cousins wasn’t going to make $20 million at CBS this year. TV can wait, and it will be there when he’s done. Even if CBS may not have a seat when Cousins is ready, he likely has the confidence that someone will make room for him at the appropriate time.
The real question is the extent to which Cousins will play in 2026. But at least he knows going in that his new team will most likely be picking a quarterback in Round 1. Unlike two years ago, when the Falcons blindsided him by picking Michael Penix Jr. only weeks after giving Cousins $100 million in guarantees.
Like Tua Tagovailoa and Kyler Murray, Kirk Cousins was cut despite having fully-guaranteed money for 2026. Unlike Tagovailoa and Murray, Cousins’s $10 million guarantee was less than his market value.
The Raiders have nevertheless found a way to get Cousins for the $1.3 million minimum in 2026, and to stick the Falcons with the $8.7 million balance.
Via Adam Schefter of ESPN, whose compensation tweet starts with the worthless assertion that Cousins “will sign a five-year, $172 million deal,” the Falcons will pay Cousins $8.7 million this year, the Raiders will pay $1.3 million, and the Raiders will pay a fully-guaranteed $10 million roster bonus in 2027.
It seems too easy, too convenient. Cousins’s market value was $20 million. The Raiders found a way to get him there by making the Falcons pay $8.7 million of it. The Falcons, frankly, should be pissed.
It’s one thing to sign a guy to a one-year deal for the minimum and to stick his former team with the rest of it, like Tagovailoa and Murray did. It’s another to come up with a way to pay Cousins more than the money he’s owed by the Falcons by bumping some of the guarantee into the next year.
The full structure eventually will be released. The four years on the back end are fluff, beyond the $10 million guarantee for 2027. The deal likely includes a trigger that will put Cousins back on the market early in the next league year.
Still, Cousins will get $20 million. With the Raiders paying only $11.3 million, that’s high-end backup money. He’s the bridge quarterback until Fernando Mendoza is ready.
And the Falcons, who made Cousins an unwitting bridge quarterback by surprisingly drafting Michael Penix Jr. six weeks after signing Cousins, will be paying 87 percent of Cousins’s salary for 2026.
The Falcons have revealed their new uniforms.
They will now wear red jerseys with white lettering and numbers as their main home look. Road games will feature white jerseys with red lettering. Both jerseys will be paired with white pants and the team will also have silver pants as an option on the road.
“Red has always meant something different in Atlanta. It’s when our best football has been played, where this city has shown its heart, and when I experienced the greatest moments of my career,” Falcons president of football Matt Ryan said in a statement. “When you put on red, you feel the history, the pride, and the energy that comes with being a Falcon. Bringing it back honors what’s been built here and fueling what’s coming next, which I’m very excited for our fans to see.”
Black helmets will be worn with both jerseys, although the team will still use red helmets for their alternate uniforms. That throwback look will feature black jerseys and white pants as well.
This week at the annual league meeting, Raiders coach Klint Kubiak said he would prefer to have a rookie quarterback watch and learn from a veteran instead of starting from Day 1.
With Fernando Mendoza likely on his way as the No. 1 overall pick, Las Vegas has now put itself in a position to have that happen.
Per agent Mike McCartney, Kirk Cousins is signing with the Raiders.
Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
Cousins, 37, was released by the Falcons last month after two seasons with the club. He’ll now head to Las Vegas in what is almost sure to be a bridge QB role.
That’s a contrast from a couple of years ago, when Cousins signed with Atlanta before the club surprisingly selected quarterback Michael Penix Jr. at No. 8 overall in the first round.
In 10 appearances with eight starts for the Falcons last year, Cousins completed 61.7 percent of his passes for 1,721 yards with 10 touchdowns and five interceptions.
DeAngelo Malone visited with the Bucs earlier this month, but the linebacker will be remaining with one of their NFC South rivals for the 2026 season.
The Falcons announced that they have re-signed Malone on Wednesday. They did not announce any terms of the deal.
Malone was a 2022 third-round pick in Atlanta and he played in 58 games before an ankle injury ended his 2025 season. All of his defensive appearances have come as a reserve and Malone has played a core special teams role throughout his time with the team.
Malone has 59 tackles, three sacks, and an interception over the course of his career.
The Bears are not ready to let the NFL off the hook.
Following the hiring of former assistant G.M. Ian Cunningham as G.M. of the Falcons, the Bears continue to appeal the league’s decision to not award the team a pair of third-round compensatory draft picks.
Via Courtney Cronin of ESPN, both president and CEO Kevin Warren and owner George McCaskey said the Bears expect a final answer soon.
The effort included a visit by McCaskey, Warren, and G.M. Ryan Poles to the league office, for a meeting with Commissioner Roger Goodell.
The league has said that the Bears didn’t get the picks because Matt Ryan — the Falcons’ president of football — is the primary football executive in Atlanta. Ryan has made it clear, however, that Cunningham is operating as the team’s General Manager.
“He is the G.M.,” Ryan told PFT Live on Monday. “He is the G.M. I’m learning — I mean you talk about things that are coming on your desk every day, management council things, different things like that, why they rule certain ways, why they don’t rule certain ways. I’m not experienced enough to give you a really credible answer on that at this point. I would say this, I think in every facet of the word, Ian’s a General Manager in this league.”
The NFL is in a pickle on this one. If the league had just given the Bears the picks in the first place, no one would have said a word about it. Now, after the league said “no” for so long, it will be reluctant to admit the first decision was a mistake.
Especially with the Florida attorney general currently hounding the league regarding the Rooney Rule.
Wide receiver K.J. Osborn is headed to Tennessee.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the Titans are going to sign Osborn to a one-year contract.
Osborn failed to make the Commanders out of training camp last summer and spent time on the Falcons’ practice squad, but he did not appear in any regular season games with Atlanta. He played one game for Washington in 2024 and caught seven passes for 57 yards in seven games for New England before heading to the Commanders as a waiver claim.
Osborn spent his first four seasons with the Vikings. He had 158 catches for 1,845 yards and 15 touchdowns during his time in Minnesota.
The Falcons are set to make another addition to their personnel department.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that they are going to hire Jeff Scott as their assistant General Manager. They hired Matt Ryan as their president of football and Ian Cunningham as their General Manager earlier in the offseason.
Scott has worked for the Eagles for the last five years and has been their vice president of football operations since 2024. Cunningham also worked for the Eagles earlier in his career, but the two men were not in Philadelphia at the same time.
Scott worked for Washington for nine seasons before joining the Eagles.
The Falcons placed the franchise tag on tight end Kyle Pitts. However, they have not ruled out trading Pitts if the right offer comes along.
“It’s my job as the General Manager to do what’s best for the organization,” Ian Cunningham said, via Josh Kendall of TheAthletic.com. “Kyle is a great player. We’ve seen his skill set. Also, it’s my job to listen. We’re excited to have Kyle. We’re excited for his future.”
Pitts will make $15 million under the tag in 2026 if he isn’t signed to a long-term deal.
He finished second among tight ends in receptions (88) and receiving yards (928) last season, trailing only Arizona’s Trey McBride. Pitts added a career-high five touchdown catches, while earning second-team All-Pro honors.
Pitts, 25, has 284 receptions for 3,579 yards and 15 touchdowns in five seasons after the Falcons made him the fourth overall pick.
If Pitts remains with the team, head coach Kevin Stefanski could use multiple tight end sets with Pitts, Austin Hooper and Charlie Woerner.
“We certainly want to be a team that goes in and out of different personnel groupings,” Stefanski said. “The spring and summer will allow us to see what our best group is and what we want to lean into.”
The NFL approved a plan on Tuesday to expand replay assistance, allowing the league at the command center in New York to drop a flag when considering a disqualification for a flagrant football act and a non-football act that was not called on the field.
Having New York put a flag on the field is a line the league previously had not crossed. While it was not originally in the proposal, it was amended to include both a flag and disqualification. But according to Rich McKay, co-chair of the Competition Committee, it’s likely not going to be the last we hear of this kind of assistance — in part because there were two instances last year where New York was ready to do something but could not.
“I think there was a good, healthy discussion on the whole idea of replay assist and the idea that over time we will probably expand replay assist even more and allow New York to do more,” McKay said on Tuesday. “But this was the first time that we ventured into the world of putting a flag down and having New York step in and disqualify a player.”
McKay added that there was not much resistance to having New York put down a flag, even in this narrow set of circumstances.
“I would say the room and the discussion in the room was more along the lines of, ‘Can we do more, not less?’” McKay said. “And I think we as a committee … we stand true to the idea that we want replay assist and we want New York to be able to help. We just don’t want to move too fast. We don’t want to add too much to it.”
McKay noted that Broncos head coach Sean Payton and Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell noted that New York dropping a flag in this particular instance made sense if there were an ejection. McKay cited the example of an offense still needing to punt on fourth-and-2 despite a defensive player getting ejected via the league office for throwing a punch.
Further on the subject, McKay noted that the league wants there to be more transparency in the process of replay assist, but not at the expense of slowing the game down.
“I think we’ve seen in college where all of a sudden, there’s been this discussion of when they … watch replay or a challenge, they have that discussion [on the broadcast] and people like that,” McKay said. “In our case, we have somebody in the stadium that’s a replay assistant, we have New York that’s watching the games, we have a referee on the field, and we are really trying to hurry the process along. We’re not interested in three-hour, 20-minute games as college has three-hour, 30-minute games. So for us, that plays a big part in it.
“This year, we did put in the book that we want to make sure the referee, every single time replay assist is used, they announce replay assist. So people hear it, it’s heard by everyone, the referee says, ‘With replay assist, we did’ this — because we do want that … so people know that people looked at it, blessed it, and this is the outcome.”
Separately, the NFL passed the plan for even more expanded replay assistance if the league uses replacement officials for this season. But McKay noted that is more about how replacement officials will have to make calls for fouls in the NFL game that may not exist at other levels, like illegal contact.
Still, more and more replay assistance sounds like it’s on the way.
“I do believe … there’s a little better appetite for this than I might’ve thought going into that room,” McKay said. “I still also know that 24 votes are real and that hurdle is not small. And I don’t think we’re in a hurry to do it if we can’t do it really well.”
