The Falcons got their guy but might be caught in the middle of ‘the most blatant case of tampering’ that Mike Florio has ever seen.
Atlanta inked Kirk Cousins to a four-year deal worth $180 million but the Pro Football Talk founder is continuing his campaign that both sides did something illegal.
On the What The Football podcast, Florior responded to a question about what offseason storyline is being overlooked with a rant about the Falcons and Cousins’ tampering activities.
“You know, tampering is such a key part of the NFL and it happens all the time. It starts at the scouting combine and it’s just kind of accepted, that’s what happens. Conversations occur when the agents and the representatives from teams are face-to-face,” said Florio, via Bring Me The News. “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.”
This all stems from Cousins’ introductory press conference at Flowery Branch, in which the veteran volunteered information that Kyle Pitts had recruited him weeks before the legal tampering period and he’d had conversations with other team personnel.
“There’s great people here,” Cousins said. “And it’s not just the football team. I mean, I’m looking at the support staff. Meeting, calling, yesterday, calling our head athletic trainer, talking to our head of P.R. I’m thinking, we got good people here. And that’s exciting to be a part of.”
Now, tampering is the worst-kept secret in the NFL. Teams, players, and owners do it all of the time. Rarely are they investigated, and even more rarely are they punished, but according to Florio, who is a notable Vikings fan, it’s the most blatant case he’s ever seen, even going as far as to accuse Cousins of some sort of inception tampering — ‘tampering within tampering.”
“And someone enlisted him to recruit Darnell Mooney from the Bears,” Florio said, via Bring Me The News. “So you got tampering within tampering, you got multiple levels of tampering. He just talked about it openly, like they just didn’t care. It was so blatant.”
The Falcons are under investigation, but I don’t expect anything serious to come down from the league offices. The most notable tampering case in recent history is Stephen Ross, the Dolphins, and Tom Brady.
Miami was stripped of a first-round pick and fourth-round pick for their role in recruiting Brady, but I don’t see something like that happening here. Still, Florio believes punishment is coming.
“The NFL isn’t going to do anything about it as long as you are not blatant. This year, they were so blatant. They can’t look the other way. I don’t think they can look the other way, we’ll see if they do,” he said, via Bring Me The News.
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