Kirk Cousins expects his kids to remember him as a Falcon above all else

Now on his third NFL franchise, new Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins expects that the Dirty Birds will be the team his kids will remember him playing for the most. While Cousins did have great success previously with Washington and the Minnesota Vikings, as well as a terrific college career at Michigan State, he knows all and well Atlanta is the team his two sons will remember he played for.

Cousins recently went on The Big Podcast with Shaq. While he initially mentioned that he wants the Falcons to be his version of what Shaquille O'Neal experienced with the Miami Heat, Cousins does not expect to play anywhere else besides Atlanta the rest of the way. His wife Julie is from Alpharetta. She went to Georgia and his in-laws live in the suburbs. They have offseason-ed here. It is their home.

Even if his two sons come to learn about his Minnesota, Washington and Michigan State days, Cousins knows Atlanta is the place where they will have their strongest football memories of Dad.

"My boys are 6 and 5. 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."

Here is Cousins' entire conversation with O'Neal on The Big Podcast with Shaq's YouTube channel.

To be fair, even I have a hard time remembering some of sports' best players in their previous stops.

Kirk Cousins expects his kids will remember him with the Atlanta Falcons

I will try to put myself into his two sons' shoes. The first Super Bowl I remember watching was Super Bowl 31 between the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots. I was a massive Drew Bledsoe fan in elementary school. This was before the Dirty Birds of 1998 and Michael Vick coming to Atlanta in 2001 which massively contributed to me being a Falcon fan for life. It was when I became an NFL fan.

I can look across baseball, basketball and football and think of a handful of players I loved to watch that I had no memory of them playing somewhere else before. In baseball, I don't remember Fred McGriff playing for the Blue Jays or Padres, just the Braves before he went to Tampa Bay and Chicago. In basketball, Dennis Rodman played with Michael Jordan, not in San Antonio or Detroit.

And then with football, there is no way Marshall Faulk played for the Colts, Reggie White played for the Eagles or Steve Young played for the Buccaneers. Those are Rams, Packers and 49ers legends, respectively! This may be more pronounced for me on the NBA side of things because I had no idea Charles Barkley played in Philadelphia, Clyde Drexler in Portland or Mitch Richmond in Golden State.

This isn't unique to me; this is just my experience growing up in suburban Atlanta in the 1990s and 2000s. By the time Cousins retires, his kids will be deep into elementary school. They will probably be completely obsessed with the Braves, Falcons, Hawks and Georgia football like any kid growing up in the region. The cool part is they will know their dad will have the best job of any of their classmates.

We can only hope Cousins can give Dirty Bird Nation as many good memories as he can his children.