ATLANTA FALCONS MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 26, 2025

Kirk Cousins

Dolphins - 34, Falcons - 10

KIRK COUSINS: I don't have much to say, frustrating day. I just wasn't good enough. I can take any questions you have.

Q. Kirk, how did it feel to get back out there again as a starter? I know it's different coming in and whatnot.

KIRK COUSINS: Yeah, any time we don't have a win, it's a tough day. Certainly first time in ten months being back out there with playing live football, that's always good to get that experience again.

Q. What did the week of prep leading into this game look like? When did you know that Mike wasn't going to get to go, they're going to lean on you? What did that timeline look like for you?

KIRK COUSINS: I think you always try to make the decision as late as possible to give every chance to heal because every day you sleep on it, you get better and better. It becomes official today when we make the decision we're going to go forward with Mike resting.

You kind of get mixed in as the week goes on and always stay ready like you do any other week.

Q. Raheem talked about the life blood, the lifeline of this offense has been and will be the run game. Of course there was the struggles at the beginning of the game, and then you had to go away from it towards the end of the game. I'm curious from your perspective what were the issues?

KIRK COUSINS: When I'm turning the back to the defense to hand it off, I don't have a great answer for you. We'll have to go back and watch the tape. Certainly it wasn't consistently productive enough, and we'll have to look at why.

Q. How would you diagnose kind of the issues with this offense right now? Even dialing it back to previous weeks, not just today. It seems like the offense could be better than what it has been so far.

KIRK COUSINS: I think it's not a simple answer. We've certainly got to be better than we were today. Those are the things we've got to do the second half of this season as we go back tomorrow and watch the tape and talk about it. We've got to kind of work through all that.

Q. You've been in this role before as a backup, but it's been a while. Did you feel like you were hitting on all cylinders today, that you were sharp outside of other issues?

KIRK COUSINS: Certainly the final result, no one can really say it was great, but I felt comfortable. I felt comfortable as far as feeling the rush and recognizing coverage and making quick decisions and managing the game. It felt comfortable.

Q. How do you go forward? Obviously Mike will go into next week questionable. How do you go forward at this point?

KIRK COUSINS: Pretty similar to every other week. You go in, and everything you do thinking about if I'm going to go, how do I get ready for this? How do I do this? Then you just react to what ends up happening.

Every day -- when you heal, every day you get better and better and better, so it's a fluid situation. You just keep getting yourself ready.

Q. As a backup, you may not feel comfortable saying week to week, hey, I like this or I don't like this. Do you feel any more ownership now to say, if you have any game plan or offensive suggestions or thoughts, being more forceful with those? Or have you been doing that the same as you would?

KIRK COUSINS: I think there's always good dialogue. I think we have good conversations in the quarterback room, good conversations on the field. I think we're always trying to communicate well back and forth, be on the same page.

Q. What effect did not having Drake out there have today?

KIRK COUSINS: Hard to say. I think there were just -- until we go back and watch the film, it's really hard to say. I think it wasn't any one thing. You just feel like there were a lot of different phases that just weren't consistently good enough.

You have to stack. You have to stack plays together, and I felt like we didn't stack plays together to be able to put a drive together to be able to go down the field and get points.