Kirk Cousins spent the last six years leading the Minnesota Vikings. But if he has his way, he’ll finish his NFL career with the Atlanta Falcons. Weeks after signing a $180 million deal with the team, Cousins has compared the Falcons to the mid-2000s Miami Heat, telling former NBA great Shaquille O’Neal he envisions a “world championship” finish in Georgia.
“I want this to be my final stop,” he said on O’Neal’s “The Big” podcast. “I don’t wanna do the deal — no offense, but I don’t wanna go play for the Suns and Celtics at the end. I wanna finish with the Heat, if you will, and be done.”
The Heat notably won the NBA Finals while O’Neal starred alongside Dwyane Wade in 2006. O’Neal went on to finish his Hall of Fame basketball career with three other teams, however, after an unceremonious breakup with Heat brass. Cousins is now on his third NFL team after headline-grabbing contract negotiations with both Washington and the Vikings.
“My boys are 6 and 5,” Cousins continued. “They won’t remember that I played in Washington. They will barely remember I played in Minnesota. They’re gonna remember I played for the Falcons. And I want those to be good memories. So I feel like this is the stretch I wanna finish strong. People remember how you finish more than you start.”
The one thing missing from Cousins’ accomplished NFL resume, of course, is a deep playoff run. While he’s been one of the game’s steadiest signal-callers for the better part of a decade, the four-time Pro Bowler has just a single postseason victory to his name. He hopes to change that in Atlanta, where the Falcons could be primed to make an immediate run at an NFC South title.