In a sport filled with folks who regularly lie when they have to, Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins is honest. Perhaps too honest, from his new team’s perspective.
During a press conference conducted only a few hours after the official start of free agency, Cousins admitted to as many as four different tampering violations that happened during the 52-hour negotiating window, when the Falcons were permitted by rule to speak only to Cousins’s agent.
The league promptly launched an investigation. It wasn’t resolved before the draft, even though it could have been — and arguably should have been. The resolution reportedly will be announced this week, which means that multiple people behind the scenes surely know what’s coming.
The Eagles also are under scrutiny for something that, publicly, fell far short of a smoking gun in their negotiations with then-Giants running back Saquon Barkley. Both outcomes are expected this week.
The most anyone has said as to what might happen to the Falcons came with this line in the report from Adam Schefter of ESPN.com: “One league source indicated that the Falcons’ alleged transgressions are considered more significant, and the discipline is expected to be more severe for Atlanta.”
It’s unclear what that means, without knowing whether the Eagles will be punished. The statement implies that Philadelphia is facing some sort of sanction. They supposedly spoke directly to Barkley during the negotiating window. In 2016, that cost the Chiefs a third-round pick for directly speaking to Eagles receiver Jeremy Maclin during the negotiating window.
So let’s assume the league will be consistent, and the Eagles will lose a third-round pick in 2025. If Atlanta’s punishment will be “more severe” than that, what will it be?
Two years ago, the Dolphins lost a first-round pick in 2023 and a third-round pick in 2024 for tampering with Tom Brady and Sean Payton. Even though they ultimately acquired neither of them. What would the proper punishment be for Atlanta essentially ignoring the rules — in multiple ways — when getting a deal done with Cousins?
His admission that he spoke to the team’s head athletic trainer is a bright-line, no-brainer. If, as it appeared from his comments, Cousins also spoke with director of player personnel Ryan Pace before 4:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 13, that compounds the violation. It also raises fair questions about who else he spoke to — questions that the league either did or didn’t fully explore. (We don’t currently know, and perhaps might never know, whether the league went #Deflategate-style scorched earth in tracking down evidence.)
Cousins also admitted to becoming directly involved in recruiting former Bears receiver Darnell Mooney during the negotiating window. This suggests that the tampering with Cousins got to the point that he was involved in tampering with Mooney. Finally, Cousins made it clear that Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts had been working on Cousins for a couple of weeks before he signed, which is another violation if Pitts was acting at the direction of the Falcons in recruiting Cousins.
Again, how aggressively did the NFL explore the rabbit hole? The league at large is watching, due to widespread suspicion that Falcons executive Rich McKay’s role as chairman of the Competition Committee might get his team unwarranted lenience.
Thanks to Cousins’s candor, it’s already the most blatant case of tampering we’ve seen. If, as it seems, the Falcons decided to pretend the tampering rules don’t exist, who knows how many other violations occurred? Indeed, we first thought of potential tampering before Cousins said a word, given that the Falcons somehow became sufficiently comfortable to give $100 million fully guaranteed to Cousins with nothing more than a video of him throwing passes on a tennis court.
Will it be a first-round pick? Will it be more than a first-round pick? After the Falcons used the eighth overall selection in 2024 on quarterback Michael Penix Jr., I dismissed the notion that the Falcons were motivated to take a quarterback in round one now because they might not have a first-round pick in 2025.
Now, I’m not so sure about that. Especially since folks in league circles are floating that theory.
If there’s anything to that, it also would help explain why the Falcons didn’t worry about the impact of drafting Penix on Cousins. After all, if Cousins hadn’t decided to be so blunt about the tampering violations, the Falcons wouldn’t be in this mess.
