Like Tua Tagovailoa and Kyler Murray, Kirk Cousins was cut despite having fully-guaranteed money for 2026. Unlike Tagovailoa and Murray, Cousins’s $10 million guarantee was less than his market value.
The Raiders have nevertheless found a way to get Cousins for the $1.3 million minimum in 2026, and to stick the Falcons with the $8.7 million balance.
Via Adam Schefter of ESPN, whose compensation tweet starts with the worthless assertion that Cousins “will sign a five-year, $172 million deal,” the Falcons will pay Cousins $8.7 million this year, the Raiders will pay $1.3 million, and the Raiders will pay a fully-guaranteed $10 million roster bonus in 2027.
It seems too easy, too convenient. Cousins’s market value was $20 million. The Raiders found a way to get him there by making the Falcons pay $8.7 million of it. The Falcons, frankly, should be pissed.
It’s one thing to sign a guy to a one-year deal for the minimum and to stick his former team with the rest of it, like Tagovailoa and Murray did. It’s another to come up with a way to pay Cousins more than the money he’s owed by the Falcons by bumping some of the guarantee into the next year.
The full structure eventually will be released. The four years on the back end are fluff, beyond the $10 million guarantee for 2027. The deal likely includes a trigger that will put Cousins back on the market early in the next league year.
Still, Cousins will get $20 million. With the Raiders paying only $11.3 million, that’s high-end backup money. He’s the bridge quarterback until Fernando Mendoza is ready.
And the Falcons, who made Cousins an unwitting bridge quarterback by surprisingly drafting Michael Penix Jr. six weeks after signing Cousins, will be paying 87 percent of Cousins’s salary for 2026.
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