Falcons GM, coach unaware of Kirk Cousins' late-season injury - ESPN

INDIANAPOLIS — Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot and coach Raheem Morris said Tuesday at the NFL scouting combine that the team was unaware quarterback Kirk Cousins was dealing with an injury late in the 2024 season.

Cousins said, on NFL Network during Super Bowl week, that he got hit in the Week 10 game with the New Orleans Saints and hurt his right shoulder and right elbow. The arm, Cousins said, never got back to where he wanted it to be the rest of the season.

The Falcons put Cousins on the injury report one day during Week 11, mentioning that he was limited in practice (a walk-through, specifically) due to a right shoulder and right elbow issue. Cousins chalked up that injury-report appearance to a «clerical error» when asked after Atlanta's Week 11 game with the Denver Broncos.

Beyond that single injury report, Fontenot and Morris said the organization was not in the know regarding Cousins' injury. The quarterback struggled after Week 10, throwing nine interceptions and just a single touchdown pass over the next five games.

«He was on the injury report that one week,» Fontenot said Tuesday at the NFL combine. «When a player is injured, we put him on the injury report and that's the only time he was on the injury report. So as far as we're concerned, that's the only injury we're aware of.»

Cousins was benched in Week 16, in favor of rookie quarterback Michael Penix Jr. The team said at the time that it was strictly a football decision, and that is what Morris maintained Tuesday. Morris said Cousins should be the one commenting on injury claims, and «for us, it was all about performance.»

«The reason we made the change when we made it was because we had some bad decisions going along that way,» the coach said.