Wide receiver hunting season is here
The Atlanta Falcons believe they can contend, eh? They should draft an offensive weapon for the fourth straight year. Buffalo should deal a future first to fight its way up, too.
There’s a story about Kirk Cousins most do not know. It’ll resonate to all parents currently chasing 2-year-olds around the house.
When Kirk was only 19 months old, he was playing on the floor of his family’s kitchen. Mom was nearby but — in the split-second she averted her eyes elsewhere — Cousins managed to reach up to pull the pot of boiling water off the cooktop. When Mom pulled his shirt off, the damage was so severe that a layer of skin pulled off with it, from his neck to his shoulders to his chest to his stomach.
Mom called 911. His fever reached 106 degrees. The hospital couldn’t put an IV in him because he was only a baby. So as Cousins shared recently, he was transported to a hospital that could use an IV… but not until his parents signed a waiver. Just in case the boy died on the transfer.
For two weeks, he healed in a hospital room.
For nearly a year, he wore a jacket compressing his skin tightly against his body.
The burns were so bad that doctors worried his shoulder mobility would be limited long term.
Cousins doesn’t remember one second of the experience, but his parents sure do. And his father believes this traumatic experience contributed to his son’s unique threshold of pain today.
“When you talk about silver linings,” Cousins said on the Falcons’ team podcast, “the blessing in disguise would be that I became a football player and certainly there are very few days where you feel great. So the ability to basically strap it up, find a way, play through the pain, I wonder sometimes if that incident helps me as a football player.”
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He still has scars on his arms, but they’re hardly noticeable when he pops the shirt off to celebrate NFL wins on the team plane.
All shoulder mobility proved to be A-OK as Cousins matured into a quarterback who’s now thrown north of 5,000 passes in the pros, all while blazing a new path toward maximizing your value in this sport. The case against the quarterback who turns 36 years old in August has been bludgeoned into submission, most recently by a nonsensical Cam Newton. A level of criticism is warranted. He has won a grand total of one playoff game and, up until ’22, he usually face-planted in primetime spots. But Cousins was always tougher than anyone thinks and Cousins remains talented enough to supply justified hope.
Before tearing his Achilles last season, Cousins was playing the best football of his career. (Ask San Francisco, the eventual NFC champs.)
Now, the Atlanta Falcons believe they’re poised to leap into contention.
GM Terry Fontenot made it clear to us that he viewed the Falcons as a team ready to win right now and then signed Cousins to a four-year, $180 million contract.
Maybe we’re effectively Lil Kirk reaching for the handle of that boiling spaghetti in the kitchen. After all, this roster was an alleged band of bullies changing the rules of engagement after last year's draft, right? Lesson learned: No team can expect to skate by with average quarterback play. The 7-10 Falcons were a few JV-level turnovers away from 10-7 as constructed last season. Out is Desmond Ridder. In is Cousins. With a capable quarterback, the Falcons are now the single-most fascinating team picking in the top 10 because they’re the team best positioned to use the draft as a legitimate springboard into contention.
Signing Cousins instead of trading for Justin Fields — and instead of playing the slots on draft day — was the Falcons’ very public declaration that they intend to win now and win big. Oddly enough, Arthur Blank was not willing to invest in Lamar Jackson one year ago but the 81-year-old owner is clearly fed up with his team’s mediocrity since 28-3.
Sadly, I have neither a pet rock or a mock draft to sell you. Rather, here is Jimmy Soul’s timeless classic, “If You Wanna Be Happy.”
That being said, at No. 8 overall, the Falcons have another massive decision to make.
There’s a very good chance they’re selecting between one of the elite wide receivers in this draft class and any defensive player of their choosing, the latter of which must excite new head coach Raheem Morris. He arrives with a sterling reputation on this side of the ball.
In truth, this defense hasn’t wielded a consistent pass-rushing threat since John Abraham 12 years ago. This is an organization that’s cycled through free-agency whiffs (Ray Edwards), draft busts (Takkarist McKinley), HOF ring-chasers at age 36 (Dwight Freeney) and spectacular teases. The case of Vic Beasley, an eighth overall pick in ’15, remains fascinating. After exploding for an NFL-high 15.5 sacks and six forced fumbles through Atlanta’s Super Bowl season, Beasley vanished. For all of his physical gifts, I’m not sure I’ve ever met an NFL player whose temperament contrasted so sharply with his day job. For a man trained to kill the quarterback, Beasley is remarkably docile. Right down to the dead-fish handshake. (He’s been through a lot, and is now playing for the Arlington Renegades of the UFL.)
Beasley’s descent mirrors the Falcons’ lingering hangover from 28-3.
It’s sure hard to argue with Alabama’s Dallas Turner or UCLA’s Laiatu Latu at No. 8, especially on the heels of going TE-WR-RB in the top 10 the last three drafts. But this is where the Falcons can still prove dead-on correct to defy the analytics community. Quadrupling down with a wideout such as Washington’s Rome Odunze is the smart play. Adding a weapon to an offense with Kyle Pitts, Drake London, Bijan Robinson catapults Atlanta into Super Bowl contention.
Pitts, a weapon tight end greats love, was criminally ignored by Arthur Smith.
London has 1,771 receiving yards through two years of slip-shod quarterback play.
Robinson, the best player in last year’s draft, flashed moments of brilliance as a rookie.
New OC Zac Robinson, plucked from the Sean McVay coaching tress, should know which buttons to push.
All of this neatly fits the new world order.
As a friendly reminder, the NFL no longer cares about defense. Park Avenue suits are unapologetically resistant to any sort of resistance in this sport. I hate it. You hate it. Most of the players and coaches hate the banning of the “hip-drop tackle” because this legislation, like all needless legislation before it, dulls football into something else. Those running this multi-billion dollar industry stared at their Venn diagrams and deemed it critical to sow apprehension into the psyche of defensive players. Fraudulent claims of “safety” should be treated with the seriousness of seven-round mock drafts.
The NFL cares only about the perception of safety. Not reality.
So, it’s as true with these Falcons as it is with those Buffalo Bills and every other team that believes it’s armed with a top-tier quarterback: Don’t fight gravity. Given an opportunity for such a treasure trove of weaponry, Fontenot and Morris should take it. Give me the receiver gliding freely through defensive secondaries over the edge rusher destined to get flagged for roughing the passer on a perfectly clean sack.
QB-needy teams shouldn’t be the only ones phoning GMs in the first dozen picks at a telemarketer rate.
Bills GM Brandon Beane should be more than willing to package a future first-rounder for a shot at Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr., LSU’s Malik Nabers, Odunze or even LSU’s Brian Thomas. Cautionary tales of drafts past don’t fit. Ten years ago, the Bills’ mistake was not parting with a ‘15 first-rounder. It was choosing Sammy Watkins over Khalil Mack, thus doubling down on the previous regime’s quarterback choice: E.J. Manuel. There’s never a guarantee future drafts will be worth a damn — look at this 2015 slop. Hell, the player the Bills selected in the second round that year, cornerback Ronald Darby, proved to be better than most on this list.
Further, talent was never the issue with Watkins. The wide receiver admitted he was doomed by his own demons off the field.
With Josh Allen, the Bills should do everything in their power to work their way into striking range. Dangling a future first-round pick as compensation would be wise.
Scouts across the league view the upper-echelon of this WR class as about certain as certain gets in a draft. Be it the Diggs-less Bills or the title-hungry Falcons or the Caleb Williams-led Bears, urgency for one of the best wideouts should run high at the top. Our Bob McGinn will begin his nine-part series next week with a close examination of this group.
Newton admitted to Shannon Sharpe that he’s “bitter” Cousins got the bag. For what the Falcons paid Cousins, the former MVP said “they could’ve got Cam Newton, Justin Fields and Michael Vick for that price.” Whatever that means. Cousins has never been a bastion of highlight-reel plays, but there’s a reason organizations continue to play on his financial terms.
At 36, he has a very real chance for a Matthew Stafford-like awakening.
He’s always been a better quarterback than his stale brand implies.
Many stories are long forgotten in the Cousins discourse. Such as how he was never even supposed to start a game at Michigan State. When Cousins walked off his high school football field for the final time, he had zero college offers. The Spartans fired John L. Smith after that ’06 season, hired Mark Dantonio and the new Spartans coach offered Cousins a scholarship after seeing him play a basketball game, a scholarship contingent on more highly touted prospects turning the school down. They did. Cousins got to East Lansing. And when Nick Foles — the QB who shattered Drew Brees’ high school records — transferred to Arizona in ‘07, he got his shot as Brian Hoyer’s No. 2 in ’08.
He’s essentially been the same quarterback ever since. There’s some resiliency hidden behind all those cliches at the podium.
It’s taken a while, but the forces around Cousins may finally be assembling just right.
Former NFL general manager Mark Dominik redirected a conversation about his old Tampa Bay Buccaneers to these Falcons. Acquiring receivers Darnell Mooney and Rondale Moore shouldn’t slow their roll, he says.
He loves the Cousins signing and believes the Falcons should draft a wide receiver at No. 8.
“Atlanta’s going to explode in terms of what they put up numbers-wise,” Dominik says. “It’s hard not to look at Atlanta and go, ‘Are they going to need work on defense? Yes. But can they outscore everybody on offense? Probably.’ As good as I think Tampa is with White, with Godwin, with Evans and I like Palmer too, the young receiver, I just don’t know if they have the explosive player at the tight end spot. And I think Kirk Cousins has always been under appreciated or under-respected for what he actually has been able to accomplish.”
Dominik and Morris were hired together by the Bucs in 2009. Morris was 34 years old.
Like one of Morris’ mentors, Herm Edwards, the ex-GM believes Morris’ road since then makes him the right man at the right time in Atlanta.
“He’s been defensive coach, he’s been a coordinator, he’s worked with lots of different head coaches that have specialties in different areas. He has seen a ton and he’s got a (DC) that he knows in Jimmy Lake. He’s going to be there as well that I had with me in Tampa. I think he’s going to feel like he can be the head coach and not have to be the coordinator. That was one of the things that ended up happening to us in Tampa. He had to be the head coach and the defensive coordinator. I don’t think that’s a good fit, especially when you’re 34, 35 years old.
“You’re going to see a much different Raheem Morris and I think the players will respond to him easily.”
A different Morris + the same Kirk Cousins + one more weapon at No. 8 overall is enough for everyone — finally — to take this team seriously.
There’s no way this take backfires one bit.
OK, now let’s all make sure our 2-year-old sons haven’t gotten into the knife set downstairs.
Always appreciate your Falcons content. Odunze vs. Latu. Tough call. Love 'em both. Perhaps a trade down, grab Latu, then grab a solid WR in Rd. 2, this does appear to be a deep class at WR...
From your lips to Blank’s/Fontenot’s ears. People here in Atlanta seem to think the Falcons are set at WR with Mooney as WR2. I don’t think so. If Odunze is there they should run the pick up.