While the Justin Fields-to-Pittsburgh rumors have heated up over the past few days, he’s not the only notable QB whose name is being tied to the Steelers this offseason.
With Mitch Trubisky and the team mutually agreeing to part ways, and Mason Rudolph set to hit the free agent market, it makes sense why Pittsburgh is going to be a popular mock destination for veteran free agents. Fields is the current name, but Ryan Tannehill has also been thrown around a lot, especially with the Arthur Smith connection.
And Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk has a new name for the hot stove, which he discussed on 93.7 today.
“If the Steelers are going to do something at quarterback, they are gonna get a veteran. They aren’t going to roll the dice with a bottom third of the first-round draft pick and hope that that guy develops,” Florio predicted. “I was talking to some people last week who seem to be intrigued by the possibility of the Steelers making a play for Kirk Cousins. And those people were very close to if not within the Kirk Cousins camp… There’s an acknowledgment that it could happen. The Falcons and the Steelers are the two teams that I think the Cousins camp is keeping an eye on.”
Cousins is pretty clearly the most accomplished quarterback in this year’s free-agency pool and has been one of the more consistent passers in the league over the last handful of years.
Since Cousins became a full-time starter in 2015, he’s thrown for 4,000 yards and 25 touchdowns in every full season he’s played besides 2019 (3,603 yards) and was on pace to easily hit both benchmarks this year. Unfortunately, he went down with a torn Achilles in Week 8, ending his season early.
The big question looming with any Cousins rumors is how bad the Vikings want him to stay. They don’t have a pick inside the top 10 of this year’s draft to take his place, and it seems like superstar WR Justin Jefferson is lobbying for him to stay.
However, the Vikings might be of the mindset that the Cousins experiment has run its course. They’ve only made the playoffs twice in his seven years there with their lone playoff win coming in the Minneapolis Miracle game in the 2019 season.
For the Steelers, he certainly represents an upgrade over what Kenny Pickett or Mason Rudolph could provide next year. But the same issue that we’ve talked about with Fields exists with Cousins. He’s going to demand a lot of money. And the Steelers, while they have ways to create more space, are roughly seven million over the salary cap as of Dave Bryan’s most recent update.
Cousins is an interesting name to monitor for the Steelers this offseason, but it would take a lot to get him, more than what I ultimately think Pittsburgh will be willing to give up.
