Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins has confirmed the reason he won’t wear the No. 8 jersey in Atlanta is that neither he nor Kyle Pitts wanted to shell out the money necessary to buy up every Pitts jersey currently on the market, which NFL rules would have required.
As PFT reported last month, Cousins could only have taken No. 8 from Pitts if someone bought all the Pitts jerseys that have already been produced for sale to fans. Cousins said on Shaquille O’Neal’s podcast that the NFL told him and Pitts they couldn’t make the trade unless one or both of them ponied up the several hundred thousand dollars it would have cost to buy all those jerseys.
“He wanted to switch numbers anyways, so it was a perfect fit. He was like, I want to switch numbers, you want No. 8, so it was perfect,” Cousins said. “And then the league spoke on it. It was like, ‘Kyle Pitts has a lot of jerseys that are No. 8 with Pitts on the back. You would have to buy every single one.’ Both of us would have to write the check. It was several hundred thousand. So I was like, I’m good with 18. And Kyle was like, I’m good with 8. So we’re going with 8 and 18.”
Cousins wore No. 8 in both Minnesota and Washington, as well as in college at Michigan State and in high school. But he won’t be wearing it in Atlanta. Cousins actually started his career wearing No. 12 in his first two seasons in Washington before switching to No. 8 in his third season. Now he has the third jersey number of his NFL career.
