Falcons Kirk Cousins Prepared for Starting Opportunity with Falcons Against Saints
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — Not much more could’ve gone wrong this year for the struggling Atlanta Falcons, but starting quarterback Michael Penix Jr.’s season-ending injury is the cruelest blow yet.
“My heart breaks for him,” backup quarterback Kirk Cousins said of Penix. “He’s someone who has handled adversity so well through his football journey and he has to do it again. I’m confident he has more good football ahead of him -- more good football ahead of him than behind him, for sure.”
Cousins, the team’s $180 million quarterback who lost his job to Penix late last season after failing to meet expectations (3,508 yards, 18 touchdowns and 16 interceptions in 14 starts), will make his second start of the season Sunday against the New Orleans Saints. He made a spot start for Penix last month, completing 21 of 31 for 173 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions in a 34-10 loss to the Miami Dolphins.
But, nonetheless, the 25-year-old Penix needs surgery to repair a torn ACL - for the third time! - which will rule him out for the rest of 2025 and likely the start of 2026, prompting a quarterback controversy in Atlanta.
A quarterback controversy that puts Atlanta in the worst of all worst-case scenarios: Their unproven No. 8 pick is out, and they’re back to leaning on an aging, average Cousins to run an offense on life support.
With that being said, it’s likely that the Falcons’ season is lost. They’ve lost five in a row and sit at 3-7. Their season is hanging by a thread. Their identity is missing. Yet Cousins is fighting not only for a miracle postseason push, but for a sense of belonging.
“I’ve never felt safe in this league,” Cousins said. “I’ve never felt like I’ve got it figured out. I’ve never felt like my job has been earned or deserved. You kind of go out there every day with cameras watching you, coaches evaluating you, teammates counting on you ... you just feel like, ‘I have to today play at a level that would suggest I belong here.’
“That’s kind of been my lived experience for 14 years.”
There’s no guarantee Cousins’ job is safe after this week, but all signs point to that being the case.
Easton Stick is the team’s backup, so if anything were to happen to Cousins, Stick would be the proverbial “next man up.” Kyle Trask, a former second-round pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was signed to Atlanta’s practice squad, giving the team another option if things get gradually worse.
“I think it’s an opportunity,” Cousins said. “I’ve got to play at a standard that’s going to give me game two, game three, game four. I don’t think you can say from here it’s seven games; you go earn that with the way you play.
“I don’t think I ever took football for granted. But you certainly appreciate the opportunity you have.”
Josh Jacobs Takes Aim at Disliked Pitch After Injury Setback
Green Bay Packers running back, Josh Jacobs was limited to just 22% of offensive snaps after suffering a knee injury mid way through week 11 against the New York Giants.
Jacobs was not the first – and sadly will likely be far from the last person to see himself suffer an injury on the Giants‘ artificial MetLife Stadium turf.
The field is renowned for being one of the least liked in the entire league, and Jacobs expressed his very clear feelings on the nature of the pitch in the lead up to week 12’s game against the Minnesota Vikings.
Packers’ Josh Jacobs Shares His Thoughts On MetLife Stadium
Josh Jacobs hates MetLife Stadium and its hard surface that injured his knee last Sunday:
“Definitely the worst. Always been the worst. I know if I ever play there again I will never talk about it because I talked about it all week, how bad it was, and it bit me in the ass.”
“Definitely the worst,” Jacobs said when asked to rank where MetLife Stadium ranked amongst the different surfaces to play on across the league. “Always been the worst. I know if I ever play there again I will never talk about it because I talked about it all week, how bad it was, and it bit me in the ass.”
Perhaps Jacobs’ words would have been even more emphatic if his knee injury had been more severe, but it was fairly clear what point he was trying to put across.
And as the reporter points out, perhaps the most remarkable feat of all this is that Jacobs only missed one full day of practice, having not participated on November 19th, and came in as a limited participant on November 20th.
As of the 20th, Jacobs – alongs with 15 other members of the team’s active roster – remains questionable to play this weekend.
MetLife Stadium Has A Poor Injury Record In The NFL
The pitch in New Jersey has a long history of being one of the most brutal and injury-prone for players to play on. Aaron Rodgers famously tore his Achilles in just his fourth offensive snap in his inaugural 2023 season with the New York Jets – who share the stadium with the Giants.
And later on that season, former Miami Dolphins edge rusher, Jaelan Phillips, suffered the exact same injury at the stadium, prompting Phillips’ ex teammate and now – ironically – Giants safety, Jevon Holland called the field “trash” in the aftermath of the injury to the defensive end.
The general trend of artificial “turf” being criticized by players, as opposed to natural grass, always seems to come to a head when MetLife is being discussed.
The artificial field covering is harder and has less shock absorption compared to grass, which makes landings harder, more painful and leads to a higher injury risk.
In addition, the pitch’s toughness can also lead to cleat’s getting stuck in the pitch, which when a player is otherwise moving at high speeds can easily cause them to rupture and tear key ligaments in the knee and other parts of the lower leg.
Despite the fact that both New York teams actually changed turf provider earlier in 2023, prior to both Rodgers’ and Phillips’ injuries later that fall, it has not seemed to make much of a difference – if any at all – to the almost constant swath of problems that seem to occur on that pitch.
