If the always mercurial Aaron Rodgers ends up retiring or waiting too long, the Falcons and Steelers might strike a deal.
You’ve been hearing Aaron Rodgers to the Pittsburgh Steelers for a long time now, which is the nature of the beast when you’re dealing with one of the NFL’s great franchises and its most attention-seeking quarterback. Whether Rodgers is simply biding his time so he can avoid pre-training camp work to save his body for a grueling season or he and the team are simply taking a long time to hash something out, he is not yet a Steeler.
Plugged-in NFL reporters continue to tell us it’s the likely outcome, but what if an accord can’t be reached? Then the Atlanta Falcons come into the picture, as ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler recently mentioned that the Steelers have Falcons backup quarterback Kirk Cousins on their radar. This is not surprising, but is worth monitoring as Cousins continues to want an opportunity to start and the Falcons continue to at least entertain the idea of shedding his contract.
Cousins will not come for free—the Steelers need to eat some money, surrender a decent draft pick, or both if competition arises somehow along the way—but he makes plenty of sense for Pittsburgh. The contract is relatively easy to escape after this season, Cousins is both a less troublesome personality than Rodgers and younger, and Pittsburgh could have more than a single year stopgap if things go swimmingly with the veteran quarterback. The fact that they need to make a trade and assume an existing contract is an obstacle, but if Rodgers doesn’t land in Pittsburgh, it’s not clear there are any other starting-caliber options out there within easy reach.
For now, Cousins is still very much a Falcon, and nothing about his immediate future is all that concrete. Barring injuries elsewhere in the league, though, the Steelers are clearly the team to watch for Cousins over the summer. If they don’t make a trade, it’s likely the team’s talk of being totally comfortable with him as the backup will be borne out, at least for the early part of the 2025 season.