Kirk Cousins and the Jets: Ah, how the quarterback position could have looked a lot different
Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins reacts after a touchdown in the fourth quarter against the Saints on Nov. 23 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Credit: Getty Images/Sean Gardner
Aaron Glenn saw enough of Kirk Cousins when they were competing in the NFC North to know what the Jets should expect from the 37-year-old quarterback, who will make his second start of the season for the Falcons against them on Sunday. Even coming off a torn Achilles that sidelined him in 2023 and eventually led to his benching behind Michael Penix Jr. — now out himself with a season-ending injury — Glenn said Cousins is “the same Kirk” he faced when he was a Pro Bowler for the Vikings.
“I’ve played against him a number of years,” the former Lions defensive coordinator said on Friday. “To me, when you look at his play-action game, which he’s been phenomenal at, he does look like himself. Man, we saw the bomb that he threw to [Darnell] Mooney [last week], which was a damn good play for those guys.
“He’s smart, he understands defense in totality, and he’s going to be able to guide those young guys into what we’re trying to do and to try to figure out how can they beat the coverages that we’re in. We know he’s going to watch every piece of film he can watch against us to see how he can beat our coverages.”
So the Jets’ coach is familiar with the Falcons’ quarterback. And the quarterback, through that famously intricate film study, will be familiar with the Jets.
Yet when it comes to actual game play, for most of the 14 years he’s been in the league, he and the Jets have been distant Cousins. He’s faced the Jets only three times before this.
However, there was a dramatic point when the paths of the player and the franchise very nearly joined into one.
During free agency in 2018, the Jets were in search of a quarterback. (Some things apparently never change.) During this particular offseason, they badly wanted Cousins, who was leaving Washington as a free agent. At one point they offered him a fully guaranteed three-year, $90 million contract. It would have given him the largest contract in history at the time and made him the second-highest-paid quarterback in the league.
Cousins never even took a visit with the Jets, though. The Vikings upped their offer to him from $75 million to $84 million fully guaranteed over those same three years, and Cousins signed with them for slightly less than what the Jets were offering. In six seasons with Minnesota, he went to three Pro Bowls, won 50 of his 88 regular-season starts and led the team to the playoffs twice.
There might not have been a reasonable amount of money that could have brought Cousins to the Jets; it seemed clear he used the Jets’ offer to drive up the one from the team he wanted to play for all along.
A few days later, the Jets shifted to what they called “Plan B.” They traded with the Colts to move up to the third overall pick that they eventually used to select Sam Darnold.
But as Cousins comes to MetLife Stadium to face the Jets for only the second time since he spurned that monster offer, it’s fair to wonder how different recent Jets history would have looked if they had landed him.
Over the next three years — the duration of their offer to him — the Jets went 4-12, 7-9 and 2-14. There is no guarantee that Cousins would have been as productive with the Jets as he was with Minnesota, but there’s a good chance he would have posted better records than those, certainly better than the four- and two-win seasons.
Todd Bowles was fired as Jets coach after the 2018 season, replaced by Adam Gase. Gase lasted two years, and in his wake, the Jets ditched Darnold (who went to Minnesota in 2024 to replace Cousins, who signed with the Falcons) and drafted Zach Wilson.
Right there, three of the biggest mistakes the Jets have made in the last decade — Darnold, Gase and Wilson — probably don’t happen if Cousins had signed with the Jets. And those three gaffes led directly to the signing of Aaron Rodgers in 2023. So maybe it’s four . . . even though the Rodgers Era would have looked a lot different had he remained healthy through the first series of his first game with the team and beyond.
If they had Cousins, they probably would not have traded up in the 2018 draft. They originally had the sixth overall pick, and they could have selected Bradley Chubb or Quenton Nelson from that spot. Or they could have traded down, maybe far enough to think about taking a flyer on the quarterback who wound up dropping to the very end of that first round: Lamar Jackson.
At least they saved against the salary cap when Cousins signed elsewhere. That’s what the Jets said at the time.
“It doesn’t hurt at all that we now have an awful lot of money that we were thinking we might be sending out the door to one player,” CEO Christopher Johnson said then. “Now we have that back with us, and we can spread that out over a lot of other players over the next few years.”
Great. So what did the Jets do with those funds?
In 2018, their big free-agency splash was cornerback Trumaine Johnson. The next year, they signed C.J. Mosley, which was a very good acquisition, but also Le’Veon Bell, which was not. In 2020, they signed Joe Flacco, Frank Gore and Breshad Perriman.
The Jets still haven’t recovered from being spurned by Cousins nearly eight years ago. It represents a clear fork in the road for the franchise.
Cousins hasn’t won it all. He hasn’t gotten close. But he definitely has fared better than the Jets have since they nearly joined forces in 2018.
And who knows? Maybe that union will occur belatedly in the next few months. If they plan to draft a quarterback in April of this year or the next, the Jets could decide they are in the market for a veteran bridge QB. Justin Fields probably isn’t long for the organization. Cousins again could be at the top of the Jets’ wish list in March 2026.
“I’ve played against Coach Glenn and [Jets defensive coordinator Steve] Wilks many times throughout my career, and it’s always been a dogfight,” Cousins said this past week. “Always have had so much respect for what they’ll do schematically, and they keep you thinking all week long and then all game long. It’ll be a challenge for us. A good opportunity.”
Perhaps even an opportunity to showcase himself for a future with the organization he once snubbed, a team that has yet to address the hole at quarterback they hoped Cousins could fill nearly a decade ago.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
