Despite all the things that made Thursday such a gravy balloon fight: Pete Alonso’s heroics, Terry Francona’s refusal to stay retired, the only person not voting for Caitlin Clark as WNBA Rookie of the Year and their smart choice to remain anonymous remain, Antonio Pierce’s exile suspension by the NCAA – nothing like this:

Well, okay. Alonso beat it by virtue of action, as ninth-inning playoff homers beat everything in the pants of Week 5. But the idea that Kirk Cousins ​​would relive his previous moment of awkward virality eight years later with a celebration that was far more visually shocking probably stole the night for regular trainwreck fans. Some of that is just the result of the dog-on-his-hinds aspect of Kirk Cousins ​​doing something even medium spicy, but it was also so far outside his career context. We’re willing to bet he never did this for the $409 million in contracts he signed between then and now.

No, Cousins’ career is particularly notable for his unerring eye for maximizing his earnings, both with his timing and the scarcity of the position. No one thought much about him or his Atlanta Falcons — as a rule, people don’t think about the Atlanta Falcons — when they and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers played paywall football on Thursday night. They shouldn’t have done that either. It’s the NFC South, and the four planets within it orbit a sun of white-hot flame-spewing suction. If you had fantasy players on either team, you would finish seventh in your pool no matter what you did.

So it was interesting but not shocking that Cousins ​​had one of his heaters at times Thursday night: 34-for-46 with 385 yards and three tuddies in a game the Falcons had lost since halftime. With two minutes left, Cousins ​​might be able to steal a win, but it wouldn’t be memorable. Those were nice numbers, sure, but he’d done numbers like this before. You don’t remember any of those games, do you?

And when Cousins ​​stood on the sideline at the two-minute warning, pretending to pay attention to head coach Raheem Morris and offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, he decided, “No, this is not the time for caution or smart chain moves.” This is the moment for my career review.”

What followed was Kirk Cousins’ football life compressed into 186 seconds, starting with the surest gamble of all: He over-lead Darnell Mooney on a fourth-and-15 from the Falcons’ 20 and hit Bucs linebacker Lavonte David in mid-digits. Just another game-killer from the most regressed to average quarterback in the game, right?

No! Tampa had four plays from the Atlanta 28, promptly managed to put themselves out of field goal range (we told you it’s the NFC South) and punted into the end zone to let Cousins ​​cover half a field in 1 :14. He did, of course, because for Cousins ​​no bad deed goes unforgiven, just as surely as no good deed goes unpunished. Cousins ​​executed an exemplary nine-play drive with two tactical spikes, the second with one second remaining. The Falcons being the Falcons, they then got a delay of game, turning Younghoe Koo’s tying field goal attempt into a 52-yarder. Koo has a formidable leg, but it had already betrayed him twice, from 41 and 54 meters (which, to be fair, was blocked).

So of course Koo makes it, and of course the Falcons win the coin toss in overtime, allowing Cousins ​​to prove, as he had already done with both the pick and the game-tying drive, that he can beat you. And themselves in so many ways.

This time it was the other boys. Two short throws to right to Drake London, Cousins’ new version of Terry McLaurin; When London was hurt in the second, Cousins ​​threw a 45-yard dart-and-go to KhaDarel Hodge for the winning score. It all took just 66 seconds. Falcons 36, Bucs 30, and what about That, Pete Alonso?

Cousins’ final numbers were career highs in completions (42), attempts (58), yards (509), and touchdown passes (four); the win pushed his career win-loss record (the most meaningless statistic in all of sports) to a whopping 79-69-2, for a 9-8 record. That’s kind of Kirk Cousins ​​in a nutshell: good enough to get right into the cusp of the postseason, and Kirk Cousins-y enough to just hang around there for a decade. It’s also the Falcons in a nutshell, just less so on the edge of the postseason. While we’re at it, also the NFC South in a nutshell. If you have a nut allergy, this could be the reason.

But numbers won’t quite tell the story of Kirk Cousins. He knows how to monetize his disturbingly wackiness in a way that only Philip Rivers in sports can match: a very different vibrational frequency, but about as strange on merits. But for a comp that makes more sense when it comes to gormless goofiness, strange intensity, and bouts of unpredictable virtuosity, the real match is Adam Sandler, who has a similar ability. Maybe that’s ultimately the way to look at this: Adam Sandler beat the Bucs on Thursday Night Football. If you’re going to steal on a Thursday night, you might as well be weird.