SI

The Story Behind the Kirk Cousins Practice Playlist Takes Quite a Turn

The Kirk Cousins playlist that went viral was not actually Kirk Cousins’s playlist.

Jimmy Traina

The Falcons quarterback explains how his birthday practice playlist came to be.
The Falcons quarterback explains how his birthday practice playlist came to be. / Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
In this story:

1. In Tuesday’s Traina Thoughts, we posted a tweet from the Atlanta Falcons that revealed the playlist Kirk Cousins had put together for Monday’s practice in celebration of his birthday.

Or so we thought.

After Kyle Brandt did a full breakdown of Cousins’s playlist on Tuesday’s Good Morning Football, Brandt heard from Cousins. Not via text or voicemail. Cousins went the voice memo route, which is a fascinating decision in and of itself.

Anyway, after praising Brandt for his performance on GMFB, Cousins dropped a bombshell. He did NOT put together the playlist that had social media ablaze. Cousins revealed that it was a Falcons assistant who came up with the playlist based on what she thought the quarterback would enjoy.

“Yesterday at practice, I’m used to always hearing gangsta rap the whole practice and I’m always like, can we have a little bit of diversity,” Cousins told Brandt. “Maybe one out of every 10 songs we can get some other genre. Usually it falls on deaf ears, but yesterday it was like one song after another. It was Foo Fighers, Good Charlotte, All-American Rejects. I was like, ‘Man, I like this song, I like this song, I like this song.’

“So after practice I went up to our coaches’ assistant, who’s the DJ and I said, ‘Madison, I gotta give you an atta boy. That was an awesome practice playlist.’ And she said, ‘Well it was because it was your birthday. That was all for you.’ So she just basically guessed what I would like and she guessed correctly, but unfortunately the list wasn’t actually my literal practice playlist.”

If the Falcons were smart, they’d immediately have Cousins make his own playlist and release it to the world ASAP.

2. In a very unsurprising move, ESPN has named Mike Greenberg as the new host of Sunday NFL Countdown after the network parted ways with Samantha Ponder last week.

Greenberg is a safe choice and one of the faces of ESPN. The company can plug him into that role and they won’t have to worry about any issues coming up regarding Greenberg’s performance.

ESPN also announced that Louis Riddick will replace Robert Griffin III, who was also let go last week, on its college football broadcasts, working alongside Bob Wischusen.

Elsewhere, NBC officially announced that Dan Hicks will take over Notre Dame football play-by-play duties from Jac Collinsworth. Jason Garrett remains the analyst for Fighting Irish games.

3. YouTube announced that NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers will now have the ability to customize the games they’d like to watch with two-, three- and four-game multiview options. When I posted this on Twitter on Tuesday, I got a lot of responses from people saying they still won’t pay $700 for Sunday Ticket.

Allow me to clear up the confusion. You absolutely, positively do NOT have to pay $700 for Sunday Ticket.

The price for Sunday Ticket is $479 if you don’t subscribe to YouTubeTV. It’s right there on YouTube’s website.

NFL Sunday Ticket
YouTube

The $700 price is only if you purchase it through the Apple app store, which there is no reason to do.

4. The WNBA is back after its Olympic break and nobody has lost interest in Caitlin Clark.

She drew more than two million viewers for a Sunday afternoon game on ABC.

What might be more impressive than topping two million viewers is that Clark drew 1.2 million viewers for Friday night’s game on ION. People complain about having to find TruTV during the NCAA tournament and Clark somehow got more than a million people to find ION!

5. The legendary voice of the New York Yankees, John Sterling, returned to the Bronx on Tuesday night for a T-shirt giveaway that celebrated him and Suzyn Waldman.

Sterling then called a couple of innings for WFAN radio and showed that he should still be doing the games.

6.  The latest episode of SI Media With Jimmy Traina features a conversation with Radio Hall of Famer, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo.

Russo talks about signing a new three-year contract extension with SiriusXM, the challenges of doing a daily radio show during the summer and staying relevant after so many years in the business.

Other topics discussed with Russo include his thoughts on whether Stephen A. Smith would ever leave First Take and ESPN, what Molly Qerim told him about his “What I'm Mad About” segment, the First Take moment that got him the most reaction, how he thinks Tom Brady will fare as an analyst, doing sports talk radio during an election season, adding Peter Schrager to his show, what it’s like to have a son going into sports talk radio and much more.

Following Russo, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins me for our weekly “Traina Thoughts" segment. This week's topics include the U.S. men’s basketball gold medal win, Season 3 of The Bear and more.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: HBO released a trailer on Tuesday for an upcoming two-part documentary on The Sopranos and it’s going to be a must-watch.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

Published |Modified
Jimmy Traina

JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

Home/NFL