🏈 Falcons

Cousins: “Everything’s Trending In The Right Direction”

Atlanta Falcons starting quarterback Kirk Cousins had much to say today when he spoke to the press at the team’s organized team activities practice at their Flowery Branch headquarters.

He spoke fondly of making Atlanta his new home and bonding with the rest of the Falcons.

“There’s just so much change right now that we just got to take it one day at a time,” said Cousins. “And believe that by, you know Labor Day weekend, we’ll be ready to go.”

He said his rehabilitation is coming along well and that he feels confident about getting back to performing at his best.
“[The] Falcons training staff’s doing a great job with me on a daily basis with the rehab and I think everything’s trending in the right direction,” he said. “I wasn’t sure when I stood here in March and just gotten here how much I’d be able to do it [in] practice but today I felt like I was able to do everything I would have normally done.”
Questions then turned to the newest member of the Falcons quarterback team, Michael Penix Jr., and how the two Falcons quarterbacks were co-existing. He said that Penix Jr. has been “great” and that there’s “always going to be competition in this league and you always got to go out and earn it.” He said he would focus on what he could control.
Cousins had no new news or updates about the NFL’s ongoing tampering investigation, touched off by conversations between him and Falcons brass before he officially joined the Falcons.

Credit: Atlanta Falcons

Then there was this question asked by WSB TV sports reporter Zach Klein about Penix Jr’s being drafted to the team.

Klein: “Hey Kirk, transparency and communication are essential. When the Falcons were recording you, if they would have told you then that they were going to take a pick quarterback at eight, would you have signed?”

Cousins: “I don’t really deal in hypotheticals. You know we could go down that path for a long time in a lot of ways. It just doesn’t do us any good so…I’m excited for this opportunity I have. I think it’s a real privilege to be a quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons and I’m trying to make good on the opportunity they’ve given me with the way I work each day and the way we play this fall.”

Cousins said that as a veteran, he stressed that quarterbacks need to work together as a team within a team.

Credit: Atlanta Falcons

As far as the team goes, Cousins says he’s “really excited about playing with them,” he said. “They’re great people, they are hard workers.” He said he enjoyed studying film, playing catch with routes, and working with Kyle Pitts, Drake London, Bijan Robinson, and others on the defensive squad.

“Probably my favorite part of the job right now is trying to help them get to where they want to go,” he said. “But knowing that they’re going to need a little bit of help to do that and I can’t wait to be a part of getting them where they want to go.”

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