Quarterback Kirk Cousins no longer has to sleep with one eye open with Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell slated to become the next head coach for the Minnesota Vikings. The plan is slowly coming to fruition in Minnesota, and although the picture remains incomplete, it’s easy to put two-and-two together and see where things are headed.
By the time the 2022 NFL season rolls around, Captain Kirk will still be the man sitting in the Vikings command chair.
O’Connell served as his quarterbacks coach back in 2017 in his final year with the Washington Commanders. So the two have worked closely together in the past. Vikings running back Dalvin Cook even alluded to it over the weekend at the Pro Bowl when asked to share his thoughts on O’Connell as a head coach.
“[O’Connell] was with Kirk in Washington, so Kirk has been kind of telling me, ‘Great guy to be around. Full of energy. Going to bring the energy,’’’ Cook said on the NFL Network. “So I’m just looking forward to it. It’s a new opportunity, new era, new energy, so we got to take advantage of it. … We got a new head man, we got a new GM, so we just got to put the right people around us, and we just got to go get it.”
If it looks like duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then Cousins is probably staying put in Minnesota.
It’s clear the team wanted to take a significant swerve in regards to the hard-nosed, old school and mostly defensive coaching mentality that has reigned over the organization for over a decade. O’Connell will come in bursting at the seams with new energy and an established working relationship with Cousins.
If there’s any young candidate capable of hitting the ground running in Minnesota, O’Connell is the clear choice to be able to do it.
Cousins’ contract is an eyesore when looking at the Vikings’ salary cap situation, but it’s the perfect time for the two sides to agree on a restructured deal to keep him a Viking. He gives the team the best opportunity to compete right away, and he can serve as a solid placement quarterback, while the Vikings continue their never-ending search for a young diamond to stand among the elite signal callers in the league.
Even if they did manage to trade Cousins, they’d still have to absorb significant dead money on a contract with a $45 million cap hit in 2022, which is the third-highest among NFL quarterbacks. It starts to make even less sense when looking at the other options out there. Would a trade for a Baker Mayfield or even Carson Wentz really make the Vikings better? It could put the team in an even worse situation.
Cousins threw for 4,221 yards, 33 touchdowns and only seven interceptions this season. There are a lot of teams out there that would have been happy with that sort of production on their roster.
Look, everyone would love to have a Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen, but those players are once-in-a-generation talents.
They don’t grow on trees.
O’Connell should be able to get the most out of the offense, and assuming newly-hired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah handles free agency efficiently and has a strong draft, the team could be on the fast track to success.
At the very least, Cousins is still the guy in Minnesota, for now.
