The Minnesota Vikings faced an uphill battle to bring Kirk Cousins back into the fold in 2024, but the behavior of the Atlanta Falcons made doing so considerably more difficult.

“Tampering is such a key part of the NFL and it happens all the time. … Conversations occur when the agents and the representatives from teams are face-to-face,” Florio said. “But there’s a certain element of discretion that gets applied where you don’t just make clear to the world that you tampered with this guy. And the Falcons’ pursuit of Kirk Cousins, to me, is the most blatant case of tampering I’ve ever seen.”

Florio didn’t stop there with his accusations against the Falcons, who will pay Cousins $180 million over a four-year deal with $100 million fully guaranteed.

He also accused the team of leveraging its new relationship with Cousins to get the quarterback to exercise his influence to attract former Chicago Bears wide receiver Darnell Mooney to Atlanta.

“Someone enlisted [Cousins] to recruit Darnell Mooney from the Bears,” Florio continued. “So you got tampering within tampering. You got multiple levels of tampering. [Cousins] just talked about it openly, like they just didn’t care. It was so blatant.”

Kirk Cousins Admitted to Falcons’ Tampering During Introductory Press Conference

The incident to which Florio referred occurred during Cousins’ introductory press conference with the Falcons on March 13.

The quarterback’s first mishap involved mentioning that Atlanta tight end Kyle Pitts was operating as a recruiting agent for the franchise several weeks before the league opened its legal tampering period on March 11. Cousins also slipped up and mentioned conversations with members of the organization prior to the appointed date.

“There’s great people here, and it’s not just the football team,” Cousins said. “I’m looking at the support staff. … Calling our head athletic trainer, talking to our head of [public relations] I’m thinking, ‘We got good people here.’”

NFL officials clearly agree with Florio — at least to the degree that they believe there may have been some inappropriate behavior on the part of the Falcons — as the league opened a tampering investigation into the team on March 14.

Tom Pelissero of NFL Network reported on that day that the league was taking a look at a couple of organizations for illegal contact with free agents they eventually signed.

“The NFL is looking into potential tampering by the [Philadelphia] Eagles and Falcons prior to the start of free agency,” Pelissero said, per Sports Illustrated.

In the end, all the league can/will do is either fine the Falcons, penalize them in the coming draft, or both. However, the punishment will be worth the acquisition of Cousins in the long run, as his presence in the huddle renders the Falcons contenders in the NFC South Division and for the playoffs.