FLOWERY BRANCH — Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins received permission to speak to the team.
Coach Raheem Morris frowns upon a “players only” meeting, but Cousins gets the team hyped before games.
Cousins consoles/corrects players when they make blunders.
In part because of his unique leadership, the Falcons are off to a 5-3 start and own first-place in the NFC South with nine games to play. Cousins and the Falcons are set to host the Dallas Cowboys (3-4) at 1 p.m. Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
“You definitely respect somebody who puts themselves out there,” Falcons defensive tackle Grady Jarrett said. “Puts big goals ahead for us that he believes in. Because the quarterback is essentially the captain of the team. …That’s the head of the snake. For him to put himself out there, let it be known to the team clearly and what he positively sees in us, and what we can accomplish, means a lot to everybody.”
Cousins is very strategic in his messages to the team. After the Seattle loss, he was looking for some self-motivation and then wanted to share with the team. He got four minutes in the team meeting Friday to attempt to provide the team some uplift.
Before the game Sunday at Tampa Bay, he was in the tunnel talking about taking over Tampa’s stadium or “Trap House.”
“That was kind of the feeling,” Cousins said. “So, one thing leads to the next. Sometimes you just black out. And if it’s a calling card, then so be it. But we’ll see if we bring it back out.”
Cousins put his spin on the hip-hop song by former Atlanta rapper Bankroll Fresh, who died in a shooting in 2016.
“Probably from fifth-grade English,” Cousin said of his rhymes. “Just trying to find words that rhyme and having enough self-awareness to know what wouldn’t go over well and what might. But it’s a work in progress.”
Cousins wasn’t aware of the Atlanta ties to the song, “Take Over Your Trap.”
“Yeah, I’m actually not well-versed enough to kind of know like, ‘Oh, we’ll stick to our Atlanta lyrics only,’” Cousins said. “But that is certainly serendipitous. It was certainly a happy accident, very serendipitous to have it work out that way.”
Cousins noted that the Falcons handled their business on the field Sunday.
“The key is that you win,” Cousins said. “You know, it’s not a great lyric if you’re saying it, and then you lay an egg on the road. It always goes back to playing football well and winning.”
Cousins always looks for edge or a way to motivate the team.
“I think it’s trying to find that extra edge,” Cousins said. “It’s trying to feel like we’re in this together, we’re doing something together, and we’re not out there alone.”
Morris recognizes the importance of Cousins’ leadership.
“I think the cool part of having a guy like that is because you go out and we’re looking for a quarterback to come out here and lead our offense and to move the ball around, to be efficient,” Morris said. “But, the leadership stuff that you get from Kirk when it comes to those things and just having the wherewithal to be able to speak to the team and be able to just be the sounding board for the message – and sometimes let me be the sounding board for his message to the team.”
Morris is fine with having the players lead in some areas.
“Kirk has a real cool understanding of what we want to do and how we want to do it,” Morris said. “He has a real process of what he’s done over the course of his career and how much success he’s had. I think people want to listen.”
Morris knew Cousins from when their careers intersected in Washington.
“When a guy has had that much success … in this league, from on-the-field and off-the-field perspective, I think it would be only wise to listen when you’ve got a guy like that,” Morris said.
Morris is enjoying Cousins have success after his recovery from an Achilles injury.
“I knew what the player was,” Morris said. “We all saw the completion rate. We all saw the touchdowns. We all saw the success he had. You like that. We all saw the ‘Kirko Chainz’ moments. We saw all those things from the outside looking in.”
The reunion has been fun.
“When I left him ... it was the young guy just making sure he did the right thing,” Morris said. “Now, it’s the family man, the leader, the community contributor, everything that you describe when you talk about what you want your players to be and how you want them to be in the community.
“Now, I was fortunate enough to be around a guy like that in Matt Ryan, a guy like that in Matthew Stafford. Now, to see Kirk just be that for us is absolutely outstanding.”
Cousins is set to face his former coach Mike Zimmer, who currently is the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator. Cousins played four seasons (2018-21) in Minnesota when Zimmer was head coach there, and things got kind of messy at the end.
“I think that would be kind of overrated, if you will,” Cousins said of his knowledge of going against Zimmer’s defense in practice. “I think his scheme is so sound, and I don’t think there’s much you can extract there.”
Zimmer was the Falcons’ defensive coordinator in the rocky 2007 season under coach Bobby Petrino and interim coach Emmitt Thomas.
“He’s been around the league for so long and is so respected,” Cousins said. “He has had a scheme that gives people problems for so long that I don’t think there’s too much that having worked together would make much difference.”
Cousins has faced Dallas regularly.
“I played Dallas in ‘20, ‘21, and ‘22, and hadn’t beat them,” Cousins said. “So, I beat them in ‘19, but not ‘20, ‘21, and ‘22. I understand the challenge that it is to play them. (We’ll be) back home. We want to play well in front of our fans. So, good challenge for us.”
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