If Aaron Rodgers decides against playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2025, their focus might shift elsewhere on the veteran market. Kirk Cousins could make a lot of sense, though the Atlanta Falcons decided against releasing him and are now dangling him as trade bait in a quarterback-starved market. According to NFL insider Josina Anderson, we may have some clarity on what it would cost in a trade to the Falcons to acquire the former Pro Bowler.
“Evening Notes: The offseason Carousel continues to churn,” Anderson wrote on X. “Atlanta has been getting calls. (I heard talk of a 3rd-round pick being potentially actionable).”
When the Falcons held onto Cousins through this past weekend, they let a roster bonus mature and get paid out. If they were going to release him, it would have been before the bonus. This signals that they are either comfortable with him being the backup in 2025 or they are pretty confident they can get a return on the trade market. Lucky for them, the veteran QB market is down to just a few names.
Rodgers is holding up the logjam, and then there is Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston and Joe Flacco. That gives the Falcons leverage, and it would appear that their asking price might be somewhere in the range of a third-round pick.
What the key negotiating point in that trade will be is whether or not the Falcons will pick up some of his 2025 salary to split with the recipient team. According to Over the Cap, Cousins carries a base salary in 2025 of $27.5 million. That is a difficult number to take on immediately after free agency for most teams, but the Steelers could technically make it work if they really wanted to. But a third-round pick plus his full 2025 salary on the books? That doesn’t seem likely.
The negotiation then turns into how much salary the Falcons are willing to split and what round pick does that correlate to in return. In the Steelers’ case, it might make sense to use some of their cap space that was allocated for a quarterback like Aaron Rodgers and use it on Cousins to pay as much of his 2025 salary as possible while giving up the lowest-round pick possible. How easy that will be to pull off depends on how many other potential trade partners are in on the negotiation.
If Aaron Rodgers is Plan B, could Cousins end up being Plan C? The key pressure point in that equation would be draft day. If the Steelers happen to like a younger option like Jaxson Dart, Will Howard, Tyler Shough or Jalen Milroe, then maybe they wait to see how the first couple rounds of the draft shake out before making a decision. But if there are multiple other teams in on these talks, they may be forced to move quickly.
