The Falcons may have tampered with Kirk Cousins

Oh, you thought we were done talking about Kirk Cousins, did you? Well. . .too bad. But, in this case, some folks will probably be happy about it.

Cousins had his introductory press conference with the Atlanta Falcons tonight, and during that presser said the following:

“There’s great people here,” Cousins said. “And it’s not just the football team. I mean, I’m looking at the support staff. Meeting — calling, yesterday, calling our head athletic trainer, talking to our head of P.R. I’m thinking, we got good people here. And that’s exciting to be a part of.”

Now, we know that the “legal tampering” period of NFL free agency got underway on Monday at 11:00 AM Central time, ahead of the new league year officially starting at 3:00 PM Central time today. However, the legal tampering period is exclusively for player agents to contact NFL front offices ahead of the start of the new league year. Teams are not supposed to engage in direct contact with the player themselves until after the start of the new league year.

That means that if Cousins was in contact with the training staff of the Falcons before today at 3:00 PM Central. . .well, that’s a boo-boo. And I’m not, for one minute, suggesting that other teams may or may not do this. Hell, it’s even entirely possible that the Minnesota Vikings have done such a thing. However, it’s pretty rare for anyone to come out and just straight-up say that such a thing occurred, as Cousins appears to have done here.

There is a precedent for this, as the story from Pro Football Talk points out. The Kansas City Chiefs made contact with wide receiver Jeremy Maclin while he was still under contract with the Philadelphia Eagles ahead of free agency in 2015, and the league stripped them of a 2016 third-round pick and a 2017 sixth-round pick as a result.

Now, I’m relatively certain that the Vikings weren’t going to be matching the sort of offer that the Falcons made to Cousins regardless of when it was negotiated. However, there are still rules that need to be followed, and now that Cousins has essentially come out and admitted that the Falcons didn’t follow them, don’t be surprised to see the league do something. It won’t directly benefit the Vikings in any way, but there will still likely be some action taken.