Comp update: Kirk Cousins will sign a five-year, $172 million deal with the Raiders that in reality is a one-year, fully-guaranteed $20 million deal that also contains a club option for two years at $80M.

The Falcons will pay Cousins $8.7 million this season, the Raiders another $1.3 million and Las Vegas also agreed to pay its new QB a fully-guaranteed $10 million roster bonus on the third day of the 2027 new league year.

And maybe most notably, it also sets another new mark: this will be the 11th straight NFL season in which Cousins’ contract will be fully guaranteed.

He ultimately used a bunch of words to describe a contract that will be shredded in a year. The last four years of the five-year deal are pretty much made up. Cousins will make $20 million for one season. Of that salary, his former team, the Atlanta Falcons, will be on the hook for $8.7 million. Las Vegas will pay the other $11.3 million.

commented, “It seems too easy, too convenient. Cousins’s market value was $20 million. The Raiders found a way to get him there by making the Falcons pay $8.7 million of it. The Falcons, frankly, should be pissed. It’s one thing to sign a guy to a one-year deal for the minimum and to stick his former team with the rest of it, like Tagovailoa and Murray did. It’s another to come up with a way to pay Cousins more than the money he’s owed by the Falcons by bumping some of the guarantee into the next year.”

The Vikings got Kyler Murray for the same $1.3 million while the Arizona Cardinals are stuck with over $35 million. If the Raiders signed Cousins for $5 million, the Falcons would pay the remaining $5 million. If Las Vegas signed Cousins for $10 million or more, Atlanta would owe nothing.

ranks third in NFL history in career earnings. He’ll likely be passed by some players who entered the league after him in the near future, but as his earnings appraoch $350 million, he can’t be too mad about that.

Cousins will turn 38 in August.

Editor’s Note: Information from PFF, Over The Cap, and Sports Reference helped with this article.

Janik Eckardt is a German sports nerd, who likes numbers and stats. He chose the Vikings to be his … More about Janik Eckardt