Kirk Cousins Throws for 500 as the Falcons Fly High Over the Buccaneers

Written By Bentley Holley

Photo Credit: Todd Kirkland, Getty Images

You like that?!? The now infamous line from Kirk Cousins continues to ring true with stellar performances from the veteran quarterback. On Thursday, Cousins put up one of those statlines when he threw for 509 yards with a 72% completion rate, 114.8 rating, and four touchdowns in an overtime thriller win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Thursday Night Football has long been a bit of a joke and almost controversial in the eyes of some players and fans around the league. Usually the matchup tends to be lackluster, players are often fatigued and end up injured because of the short turnaround and because there is such a quick turnaround, the score is oftentimes low or involves a blowout.

While this has been the case for many games for Thursday Night Football, now on Amazon Prime, this past encounter between the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers bucked the trend of boring and lackluster instead giving fans a taste of what Sunday football feels like, earlier in the week.

The Bucs and Baker Mayfield have been quite the story themselves as they came into this matchup 3-1 including a dominant win over the Philadelphia Eagles last week where they showed their resolve in a bend but not break style of play as the Eagles began to mount a comeback. With wins over the Washington Commanders and the Detroit Lions as well, Tampa looked to be a sneaky contender as, despite an upset loss to the Denver Broncos in Week 3.

As for Thursday, the Atlanta Falcons came in off a last second field goal victory over the division rival New Orleans Saints, so both teams came in on a high. With a dominant offensive performance back and forth, the game remained close into the end of the fourth quarter, with a score of 30-27. With just under four minutes left, the Buccaneers had the ball, but then fumbled it giving Atlanta a chance to comeback. This drive ended with a Kirk Cousins pick and the game seemed all but over.

However, the Falcons defense buckled down; and with all three timeouts, they gave Kirk and company one more chance to get into field goal range. With 12 seconds left, the Falcons started a play and completed a pass to Drake London across the middle of the field. With no timeouts remaining, the Falcons spiked the ball with one second to go to set up Younghoe Koo with a 52-yard attempt which he drilled through the uprights. Koo had missed two field goals previously in the game so this was the storybook bounce-back for Koo and the Falcons.

In overtime, the Falcons won the coin toss and elected to receive. With an 18 yard completion to Drake London, the Falcons got the first down on a 3rd and short. The very next play, Kirk completed a pass to KhaDarel Hodge who made a defender miss and then zipped through the rest of the Bucs secondary for a 45-yard touchdown to win the game.

This completion is what pushed Cousins over the 500-yards passing mark, a feat that has only been completed 25 times, including Kirk’s performance.

As it stands, Cousins is 1st in the league in passing yards and 3rd in the league in passing touchdowns. With an elite set of weapons in Drake London, Bijan Robinson, and Kyle Pitts, Kirk has all the chances in the world to continue to establish himself as a legitimate MVP candidate if he can keep up this level of play and guide the Falcons to more victories.

Bentley Holley
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