Of the many question marks surrounding the Minnesota Vikings this offseason, the decision to sign Kirk Cousins to an extension was perhaps the biggest.
As of Monday morning, we have an answer. Cousins’ agent Mike McCartney tweeted congratulations to the Pro Bowl quarterback.
The extension keeps Cousins under contract with the Vikings through the 2022 season. Minnesota is 19-13-1 over the past two seasons with Cousins as the starting quarterback, including a 1-1 record in the 2019 playoffs.
As with any large quarterback contract, it’s important to wait until all the details of the contract are reported before drawing any conclusions. Numerous reports indicate that the Vikings have added two years and $66 million to his current deal. So, including 2020, Cousins is under contract for three seasons and is set to make $96 million, with $61 million guaranteed.
One additional note is that it sounds like this will give the Vikings more cap flexibility this offseason. Cousins’ initial 2020 cap hit was $31.5 million. Tom Pelissero is reporting that Minnesota saves $10 million in cap space with this deal.
Cousins’ new cap hits are $21 million (2020), $31 million (2021) and $45 million in 2022. It’s worth noting that Cousins’ contract carries only $10 million of dead money in 2022, so the Vikings could get out of this deal prior to 2022 and save $35 million.
This would suggest that the Vikings have strongly back-loaded this extension in anticipation of a large increase in the salary cap once the new CBA agreement goes into full effect for the 2021 season.
UPDATE (10:50 am): Cousins does not have the same no trade clause provision on his new, 2-year deal, per source.
When Cousins signed his initial deal to join the Vikings in 2018, the Wilf family preached the need for stability at the quarterback position. The Vikings had everything besides stability at the position prior to Cousins. The last time the Vikings have had true quarterback stability was Daunte Culpepper in the early 2000s. Since then, the Vikings have not found a guy to stick — for a number of different reasons.
From that perspective, it’s not difficult to see why the Vikings would extend Cousins. Objectively, he’s an above-average starting quarterback who just played the most efficient season of his career. Many teams have worse situations at quarterback than that.
Additionally, this extension also provides more job security to general manager Rick Spielman and head coach Mike Zimmer. Both Spielman and Zimmer are tied to the success of Cousins, and an unsuccessful 2020 season would provide that window for the ownership to clean house and start over. With Cousins under contract through 2022, the Spielman and Zimmer can stick around and continue to try to build that Super Bowl winner with Cousins as quarterback.
Is Cousins the quarterback to carry the Vikings to their first Super Bowl? It seems he has more doubters than believers at this point. Perhaps the playoff win at New Orleans is a sign of better things to come. Or perhaps the divisional-round loss to San Francisco suggests Cousins has reached his peak.
At any rate, the cap savings created by this extension for 2020 just made this offseason a lot more interesting.
