Netflix’s ‘Quarterback’ series showcases a Kirk Cousins who is longing to return to the Vikings

At one point during the second season of the Netflix “Quarterback” series, Kirk Cousins is relaxing at home with his wife Julie, and he invokes a metaphor for his feelings about moving on from the Minnesota Vikings after the 2024 season.

“I heard somebody describing it as when you see someone dating the person you used to date in like high school or college,” Cousins said. “You’re like, ‘I used to throw to Jordan Addison and Justin Jefferson and now someone else is enjoying doing that.’ That’s interesting.”

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Cousins went on, delving in his Week 14 game during the 2024 season, when his Atlanta Falcons traveled to face Minnesota for the first time since he’d left the Vikings in free agency.

“I was asked by the broadcasting group for the game, ‘What about Atlanta made you want to leave Minnesota?’ And I said, ‘That question is the wrong question. I didn’t want to leave Minnesota. There was nothing about anywhere that made me want to leave Minnesota. We wanted to be in Minnesota.’ But it became clear that we were gonna be there year to year — and that’s what we didn’t want. At that point we said, ‘All right, we need to look elsewhere. If that’s our only option, then we’ll be back.’ And when we said, ‘Well, we looked around and we found there’s an opportunity that would be a longer commitment. Would you be interested in giving us that longer commitment?’ They said, ‘No, we’re good with our offer.’ I said, ‘OK, you made my decision really easy.’”

There’s plenty to unpack in the Netflix series for all three participants — Cousins, the Detroit Lions’ Jared Goff and the Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow. But perhaps nothing overshadows the many layers of regret and career derailment that Cousins’ storyline brought to the table. It’s a storyline he clearly softened a bit when offered the opportunity to speak about signing a four-year, $180 million contract with Atlanta, before watching the Falcons shockingly draft Michael Penix Jr. with the eighth overall pick in the draft just weeks after Cousins committed to the organization.

Cousins said he felt “misled” when the draft-day stunner unfolded. That’s a diplomatic phrase. Everything I have heard from talking to those close to Cousins is that the more accurate descriptor — and more acidic — is that he was lied to. He signed in Atlanta believing he was going to be the unquestioned starter who absolutely wouldn’t need to worry about a creeping rookie first-round pick waiting in the wings. And that’s exactly what happened. Now we have the missing nuance to how the 2024 season unfolded, which saw Cousins suffer an arm issue in Week 10 against the New Orleans Saints, followed by a spiral of clearly injured play, a loss of arm strength, pressing to dig himself out of a hole and finally, succumbing to one of the worst periods of his career that led to a demotion … when he likely should have taken a sustained period to rest his elbow rather than try to hold his job against a Penix takeover.

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There’s a lot of layers in here that illustrate the complexity of navigating the career of a mid-30s quarterback who is trying to squeeze everything out of his remaining years. With Cousins, a cascading set of circumstances presented themselves, putting him in position to have one of the worst cases of buyer’s remorse as a free agent, and now entering the 2025 season wanting to be somewhere else but also trapped by the guaranteed salary the Falcons still owe him.

Without doing a full play-by-play of Netflix series, here are the most important points of the Cousins journey that are laid out:

• He believes the Vikings were honest about their plans in their 2024 free-agent negotiations — which they apparently told him included a limited commitment and drafting a young QB to groom — and that led him to lean into the Falcons’ opportunity … which he clearly now thinks is a scenario where the team lied to him about its intentions to do the same thing as the Vikings.

• Cousins regretted leaving the Vikings once the Penix pick was made, with multiple instances where both he and his wife framed Minnesota as a place their family never wanted to leave.

• Once Cousins was in the saddle as Atlanta’s starter and with Penix behind him, his standing on the depth chart remained on his mind. So much so, when he suffered his throwing-arm injury against the Saints in Week 10 — and debatably should have sat down for the best of the team — he instead pushed himself to stay in the lineup out of fear of losing his job. This isn’t even a guess. At one point, Cousins references reading a book from Saints legend Drew Brees that espoused the notion of never letting a backup QB get onto the field, out of the sheer fear of losing a job. Taken into wider context, it’s not hard to surmise that Cousins very likely should have sat down with his injury. Instead he kept himself in the lineup to limit the potential of losing his starting job.

• The Netflix series went on to present a very real representation of what can happen with quarterbacks who play with injuries. Cousins’ limitations set the stage for some turnovers, gaffes that set the stage for him pressing to reverse his plummet. Things inevitably got worse and then began to infect his confidence and decision-making. In turn, Atlanta’s QB decision suddenly became more justifiable. Cousins was playing the worst football of his career, thanks to a combination of health, pressure, decisions and confidence. This is how a $180 million QB loses his job to a rookie.

There are a few ways you can look at what unfolded in Atlanta. On one hand — and this is very pro-Cousins — the throwing arm injury he suffered in 2024 and reality that he was still working through his Achilles tear from the previous season is suggestive that Cousins’ career hasn’t gone over the waterfall quite yet. When his precipitous decline occurred in 2024 and observers said he didn’t look right physically, it gave credence to his issues being a temporary health problem rather than the cliff-dive of age.

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On the other hand, you can suggest this is what the Falcons created when they drafted Penix. They signed a veteran to a massive deal and gave him an in-house problem to worry about that would ultimately impact his thinking. Effectively, you could argue Atlanta put Cousins into a position that he had to worry more about his starting job than whether his injury was adversely impacting the team. And in the wake of being put into that position, Cousins chose his own football mortality as a starter over what might have been best for the Falcons when he suffered his injury.

Heading into 2025, it’s mostly just a dissection for posterity: What not to do when you sign a major veteran free-agent quarterback. But because of the Netflix series, it’s not just that. We now know that Cousins regrets signing with the Falcons. Yes, we can debate whether his signing was all about guaranteed money and if he still would have signed the deal if he knew the Falcons planned to draft a quarterback. Given his career of being a first team All-Pro when it comes down to locking in guaranteed money, you can make the argument that even if both the Vikings and Falcons had told Cousins they were drafting a first-round quarterback, he still would have chosen Atlanta simply because it offered more guaranteed money.

But there remains an underlying vibe that comes out the Netflix series. Cousins and his wife clearly still have an affinity for their experience in Minnesota. It was showcased when they both seemed to be white-knuckling his return to play the Vikings in 2024 and how he would be accepted by their fan base. The couple appeared to harbor some resentment for how everything unfolded in Atlanta.

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There’s little doubt that Cousins’ time with the Vikings was a core experience that he deeply regrets ending. And it stands to reason that he’d be open to returning there — a reality that was supported this offseason when both his camp and the Vikings considered him an “on the radar” player to back up J.J. McCarthy in 2025. While I have no doubt Cousins would love to get another shot as a starter almost anywhere in the league — maybe even in Atlanta — I also believe he’d ask his agent to move heaven and earth to get him back to Minnesota if for some reason McCarthy’s debut doesn’t go as planned in 2025.

That’s one of the clearest storylines in this season of “Quarterback.” Cousins didn’t want to leave Minnesota, and regrets taking money and security over established happiness. Now he’s a backup in Atlanta trying to find his way back to that place. There’s nothing saying the Vikings would want to entertain a Cousins return if things went sideways with McCarthy early in 2025. But the message is definitely out there.

Cousins is pining for his ex. And all he needs is any opportunity to get a second chance to put it all back together.