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The outlook for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2024 offseason has seemed to change in a big way since the NFL season came to an end on Super Bowl Sunday.
Four days after the Steelers were eliminated from the AFC playoffs on January 14, head coach Mike Tomlin told reporters that <a href="http://Kenny Pickett would be Pittsburgh’s QB1.
But Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio suggested there is a higher-profile quarterback who could become a more realistic option.
Kirk Cousins‘ camp is “keeping an eye” on the Steelers, Florio said February 15 during an appearance on 93.7 The Fan.
“I don’t know if the Steelers would dig deep enough to pay a guy like Kirk Cousins, but I was talking to some people last week who seemed 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,” Florio said, according to Sports Illustrated. “It’s an acknowledgment that it could happen. The [Atlanta] Falcons and the Steelers are the two teams that I think the Cousins camp is keeping an eye on.”
Before Florio’s report, Justin Fields of the Bears became the betting favorite to land on the Steelers, according to Fox Sports.
Steelers’ Best-Case Scenario
Cousins, 35, will become an unrestricted free agent in March and wouldn’t come cheaply. After making $35 million in 2023, Cousins is projected by Spotrac to land a three-year deal that pays him an average annual salary of $39.5 million.
As of February 15, the Steelers were $13 million over the salary cap, but according to Sports Illustrated’s Noah Strackbein, “they may try to clear as much space as possible, but … it would take a lot of moves to come up with the money needed for Cousins.”
Cousins’ price and his recovery from his Achilles injury are both a bit concerning, but according to a CBS Sports story published on January 31, his recovery has been a “positive process.”
“We are two and a half months in since surgery, and I kind of kept waiting for the setback or the frustration with the rehab, but it’s been a positive experience,” Cousins said, according to Isabel Gonzalez’s story. “We got probably another three or four months to go, whatever it may be. But I’m excited [about] getting out the other side and playing next season. I’ll probably appreciate playing more than I ever have before.”
Acquiring Fields would require a trade of draft capital. Signing Cousins would allow the Steelers to hold on to their draft capital, giving them the opportunity to address other needs in the April draft.
Kirk Cousins Has Been a Consistently Good QB
Since the moment he became an NFL starter, Cousins has been proving that he’s a good quarterback.
In 2015, his first full season as a starter, Cousins threw for more than 4,000 yards while leading the league in completion percentage.
He followed that up with 4,917 yards in his second season as a starter.
Since signing with the Minnesota Vikings in 2018, he has remained consistent.
He went over 3,500 yards in each of his first five seasons in Minnesota, topping 4,000 in four. He also averaged a little over 30 passing touchdowns per season in those five years.
During the 2023 season, he was on pace to leading the league in passing yards and touchdowns before he was sidelined for the rest of the season with an Achilles injury. In just eight games, he threw 2,331 yards and 18 touchdowns while completing 69.5% of his passes.
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