Over the last few weeks, there has been a ton of speculation about the Vikings free agency. They sat approximately $15 million over the cap with multiple players primed for trades and restructures. Within those discussions, there were a lot of different ways this offseason could go.
Just minutes after Tom Brady tweeted out to the world that he was coming out of retirement and back to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tom Pelissero broke the news that the Vikings had agreed in principle to an extension with quarterback Kirk Cousins.
With all of the discussions of possible change, the Vikings have extended Cousins by giving him a fully guaranteed short-term extension.
The #Vikings are signing Pro Bowl QB Kirk Cousins to a one-year, $35 million fully guaranteed extension that puts him under contract through 2023, per sources.
Cousins gets a raise to $40 million in 2022, $55 million payable by next March and a no-trade clause.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 13, 2022
The details of the extension does make sense given the teams cap constraints. Here is how it breaks down.
Correction: $50M of deal will be paid by this time next year, not $15M.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 13, 2022
According to Over The Cap, the Vikings are $750,000 away from being compliant with the salary cap. When you look at this from a salary cap compliance perspective, this move makes some sense.
However, from the perspective of building a championship contender, this move is baffling.
Just two years ago this week, the Vikings did the same exact thing. They gave Cousins an extension over two seasons worth $66 million. That shrunk his 2020 cap hit from $31 million to $20 million. It also set up a $45 million cap hit for 2022. This extension essentially does the same thing, dropping it down to $31 million. It also adds on two void years to push $12.5 million down the road.
The biggest frustration with this move is that it not only accepts mediocrity, but embraces it.
Let’s face it, the Vikings were a Super Bowl contender when they brought in Cousins. They were coming off an appearance in the NFC Championship Game and had the No. 1 defense. Cousins was signed to be a mercenary to climb to heights Case Keenum couldn’t reach. Over the last four years, he went 33-29-1 with the Vikings.
Over those years, Cousins has put up some impressive stats. He’s thrown 124 touchdowns to only 36 interceptions. He throws a really nice, accurate football and can run an offense with command.
But the difficulty with Cousins is that it’s not enough.
Throughout his tenure, there are numerous instances where he plays like a top-tier quarterback. The issue is there are too many games where he plays incredibly poorly. The 2019 games against Chicago and San Francisco are prime examples of him playing at a disastrous level.
It’s never been about what Cousins can do but rather what he doesn’t or can’t. Too often Cousins refuses to be aggressive and will take the check down when a receiver is about to come open down the field. Jay Gruden spoke several years back about Cousins’ need for everything to be perfect on a given play. That mentality hasn’t escaped him. In fact, it has creeped in even more.
The Vikings over the last four seasons went from having the fifth-ranked defense to having one of the bottom-five defenses each of the last two seasons. The main reason is the opportunity cost of his contract.
After the 2019 season, the team lost Xavier Rhodes, Linval Joseph, Trae Waynes and Mackensie Alexander due to cap constraints that his contract provided. While Cousins is objectively really good, he isn’t good enough to elevate the talent around him and overcome the deficiencies that the team has. The offensive line, poor defense, struggles with play-calling and missing weapons have all been issues for the Vikings during his tenure. That’s the biggest issue with his contract. It’s what he doesn’t provide on the football field.
We have seen multiple times over the last decade teams understanding they didn’t have that game-changing quarterback to take them to the next level.
The Kansas City Chiefs traded up 17 spots to select Patrick Mahomes while still having Alex Smith, who led them to a 13-3 record. The Buffalo Bills had Tyrod Taylor lead them to their first playoff appearance in 18 seasons and drafted Josh Allen. The Rams just traded away Jared Goff for Matthew Stafford, incurring a dead cap charge of over $20 million and losing two first-round draft picks, because they knew Goff wasn’t the answer.
Kirk Cousins is in that same mold. One playoff spot in four seasons isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. In fact, he is one game under .500 for his career when he has consistently had a myriad of weapons and elite play-callers at his disposal.
The Vikings were set up to be able to make the change most had hypothesized they would do: move on from Cousins and potentially select a quarterback with the 12th overall pick of the 2022 NFL Draft. New general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, a brilliant mind that came from Wall Street, seemed primed to make that move. He and new head coach Kevin O’Connell had a clean slate to make whatever moves they wanted to shape the team. With this extension, it raises major questions about their vision of the future in Minnesota.
No team has ever won a Super Bowl with their quarterback taking up 15 percent or more of the salary cap. This year, Cousins cap charge is exactly 15%, while 2023 has a charge of 16.1%.
Over his career, analysts and fans alike have moved the goalposts for Cousins. It’s excuse after excuse for why he wasn’t successful in a certain situation.
“The coaching was bad.”
“The offensive line can’t protect him.”
“The defense can’t stop anyone.”
At a certain point, when the quarterback is below .500, he deserves to shoulder that blame.
At first glance, the Vikings have decided that they’d rather stay relevant by remaining competitive and selling out U.S. Bank Stadium than winning a Super Bowl.
The idea of running it back with how the roster projects out and the track record of poor results isn’t exactly a great idea. In fact, letting go of Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer just to do the same exact thing under a different banner doesn’t exactly exude confidence from the fanbase and analysts alike.
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah had a real chance to change the narrative and be different because he is, and his first big move is a Cousins extension and spread out the cap hits with void years. I’m genuinely baffled by the commitment to staying mediocre
— Tyler Forness (@TheRealForno) March 14, 2022
Adofo-Mensah deserves more time to show what his vision for the team truly is, but this is a poor start.
For an executive of his intelligence to look at the data in front of him in regards to paying above-average quarterbacks top-end money, to make this move—it really is quite shocking. If he is successful, this would be the first team to win a Super Bowl with these constraints, and it would open the eyes of the entire football world as to how to build a franchise. Starting off your first time running a team focusing on making the outlier work is not a great strategy.
Overall, I think Cousins is a good football player. In fact, I believe he is a fringe top-10 quarterback. The fact of the matter is that his flaws are too much to overcome for me to feel comfortable with this extension. The next few days are going to speak volumes as to whether we should have the glowing confidence that we had when Adofo-Mensah was hired.
Until proven otherwise, this extension is a commitment to mediocrity.
