Kirk Cousins is in attendance at Falcons mandatory minicamp

There was a question of whether Cousins would make his displeasure known, but he has shown up.

Kirk Cousins has had a whirlwind time with the Atlanta Falcons, from the giddy highs of signing a big money deal to the lows of tampering penalties and unreal interceptions. Through it all, Cousins has tended to keep his displeasure about the team drafting Michael Penix, benching the veteran quarterback, and not cutting or trading him to a dull roar, which is to his credit.

That has continued into mandatory minicamp. There are players around the league who are not showing up, risking fines to show their displeasure with their contracts or the fact that they’re still stuck with their current franchise, but Cousins will not be one of them. Instead, Atlanta’s penciled-in 2025 backup quarterback is signaling he’s along for the ride, wherever it may take him.

While Cousins has been quietly disgruntled since hitting the pine last season, he’s chosen not to make a public fuss about it, and this is a continuation of that. Indeed, the team has taken pains to talk about how good Cousins has been for Penix and how well he’s handled something that had to be a major blow to his ego. As fans, the fact that Cousins was benched less than a full season into his deal and is still hanging around with a hefty price tag in addition to the tampering fine makes this era a major annoyance. For the team, though, the buyer’s remorse on Cousins and the bulk of the resulting embarrassment from media circles is fading, and now they have either a useful backup or trade chip, one that isn’t making waves.

I still think the Falcons will ultimately trade Cousins when another team suffers a crisis at quarterback, but we’ve crossed enough thresholds at this point that it’s not difficult to see him staying with the team into the season. The money is a sunk cost and Cousins is, despite his awful stretch as a starter last year, about as experienced and useful a backup as you can get if the team cannot find a trade partner. It seems unlikely that another team won’t be in need of a starter by, say, Week 8, but stranger things have happened. If Cousins looks healthy this summer and well past his Achilles injury, perhaps his value increases as a result and he moves on faster.

I’ve had my doubts all along that we’d cross this bridge, but the fact that we’re in June and Cousins is showing up for minicamp with no starting vacancies standing out across the league means for the first time since his Washington days, the veteran may well be a team’s backup quarterback.