Joe Burrow and Kirk Cousins have been on opposite sides of 27 real dynasty trades.
Not simulations and not a calculator lining up two numbers. Every one of them is a completed trade from a public Sleeper league, graded at the player values that were current on the day it happened.
None of them were a straight one-for-one. Every time these two crossed, something else was attached to close it.
This is the part a calculator cannot tell you. In 9 of these deals exactly one side had to attach something extra, and 9 of those 9 times it was the Kirk Cousins side (0 the other way). The side that keeps having to add is the side holding the lesser asset, so the market has been treating Joe Burrow as the more valuable of the two.
Everything above is priced on the day each deal happened, which is the only honest way to grade a completed trade. It is not what they cost now. Today Joe Burrow prices at 3,751 and Kirk Cousins at 25, so the market currently rates Joe Burrow about 150.0x the other. A pair can lean one way across its history and price the opposite way now; that gap is the whole reason to check the deal in front of you rather than the deal someone made in 2023.
Values as of 2026-07-24.
| Date | Margin | Went with Joe Burrow | Went with Kirk Cousins |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-06 | +2% | Isaiah Likely, Will Levis, 1 2nd | 2 1sts, 1 2nd, 1 3rd |
| 2024-10-21 | -17% | Stefon Diggs, Wan'Dale Robinson, 1 1st | Amon-Ra St. Brown, Zay Flowers |
| 2024-09-09 | +38% | 2 3rds | 2 1sts |
| 2024-08-13 | +107% | Joe Milton, Drake Maye, 2 2nds | Keon Coleman, Baker Mayfield |
| 2024-05-31 | +8% | Zamir White, 1 2nd | Michael Penix, Drake London, Jaxon Smith-Njigba |
| 2024-04-13 | +24% | — | Daniel Jones, 1 1st, 1 later pick |
| 2024-03-01 | +10% | Cedric Tillman, Tyler Lockett, Jalin Hyatt, 1 2nd | Matthew Stafford, Jerome Ford, Tank Dell, 1 1st |
| 2023-12-02 | +42% | — | Geno Smith, Aaron Jones, 1 1st |
| 2023-10-23 | -52% | Romeo Doubs | DeVonta Smith |
| 2023-10-06 | +72% | — | 1 1st |
Read each row as: Joe Burrow, plus anything in the third column, was traded for Kirk Cousins plus anything in the fourth. An em dash means that side sent nobody else. Margin is the value gap at that day’s prices from the side that received Joe Burrow; positive means that side came out ahead.
Across all 27, the whole-deal value gap runs +29.2% from the side that received Joe Burrow, so the side ending up with Joe Burrow has generally come out ahead on face value. That measures the entire trade, every piece included, not these two players against each other.
A calculator answers “is Joe Burrow for Kirk Cousins fair” by subtracting one number from another, and it gives every manager in your league the same answer. That tells you nothing about whether the trade closes. What closes it is whether one side has to attach a piece, and which side that usually is. The 27 deals above are the record of what leagues actually agreed to when these two were on the table together.
How trade fairness actually works →
Every Joe Burrow trade · Every Kirk Cousins trade
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