The NFL Combine is taking place this week, and you won’t find a better time of year if offseason trade speculation is your jam. Whether it’s Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, Deshaun Watson, Jimmy Garoppolo, Derek Carr, or even Kirk Cousins, nearly a quarter of the NFL’s starting quarterbacks find themselves swept up in internet limbo and potentially playing elsewhere in 2022.
Locally here in the Twin Cities, the Cousins dilemma is almost impossible to ignore. Folks are digging in their heels over their preferred outcome for Minnesota’s quarterback. You may believe the Vikings are better off with starting anew offensively. Perhaps you want to see what new head coach Kevin O’Connell can provide Cousins that Mike Zimmer couldn’t over the past four years. Either way, it’s more than fair if you’re exhausted by the Cousins chatter over the past few weeks. And if you’re anything like 99.9% of Vikings fans these days, you probably have a healthy amount of conviction behind your Cousins take.
But instead of forcing you to read through yet another Cousins-related Should He Stay or Should He Go piece, let’s take a look back at what Sean McVay’s offense has been able to accomplish since he became the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach in 2017. Why? It’s the same scheme that O’Connell will be implementing with the Vikings.
Coming off arguably the worst rookie quarterback season for a No. 1-overall pick in the 21st Century, former Rams signal-caller Jared Goff was immediately transformed into a winner from the moment McVay walked in the door. Gone were the days of “leading” Jeff Fisher‘s ball club to an embarrassing 0-7 record as the starter with an abysmal 63.6 passer rating. With McVay’s arrival, Goff became a Pro Bowler after recording a passer rating of 100.5 and leading the Rams to an NFC West crown. Despite displaying serious limitations as a quarterback during his rookie year in ’16, Goff led the NFL’s top-scoring offense in his first season with McVay.
And even though the Rams went one-and-done in the postseason in McVay’s first season in LA, they would take another jump in Year 2.
With Goff in his third season, the Rams’ offense continued to flourish as a league leader. Even with All-Galaxy defensive game-wrecker Aaron Donald, LA still ranked in the bottom half of the league in points allowed (20th). After righting the wrongs from the previous year’s postseason, the Rams went on the road and punched their ticket to the Super Bowl after beating the New Orleans Saints in overtime in the NFC Championship game. And despite falling short in the Super Bowl against Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the New England Patriots, Goff and McVay appeared to be a match made in football heaven.
In 2018, Goff improved in every major category from the year before. He experienced an uptick in completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns, and passer rating.
And even though Goff still had two years remaining on his rookie contract, the Rams handed him a four-year extension on the eve of the 2019 season. Instead of playing the 2019 season on an $8.9 million cap hit, it jumped — albeit mildly — to $10.6 million. And in 2020, Goff’s cap hit would’ve been $22.73 million had he played out the final year of his rookie deal. But with his 2019 extension, Goff’s cap hit in 2020 was $28.8 million, the third-highest in the NFL.
Interestingly enough, O’Connell was Goff’s offensive coordinator with the Rams in 2020. A full year after Goff regressed hard once he signed his contract extension. Over Goff’s final two seasons in LA from 2019-20, he recorded a passer rating of 88.1 once the league figured out that he can’t consistently beat you if you force him to drive the ball downfield.
Remembering Goff’s early success in Los Angeles could prove critical for Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell as they continue their collaborative efforts to determine the best course of action for the quarterback position.
On the one hand, this same scheme that O’Connell is bringing to Minnesota undoubtedly elevated a quarterback with four below-average campaigns under his belt in six seasons as an NFL quarterback. Before getting re-exposed as the quarterback with the same limitations that we saw in ’16, this scheme helped the Rams go 24-7 and win the NFC in two seasons with Goff. And while Todd Gurley was leading the charge for the Rams’ offense with Goff, it’s not like he had receiving weapons as talented as Justin Jefferson or Adam Thielen to throw to.
In that same vein, O’Connell saw first-hand in 2020 with Goff what can happen after a middling, below-average quarterback with a massive cap hit torpedos an offense. Just like Goff in 2020, as it stands now, Cousins will account for the third-highest cap hit across the league in 2022.
If it weren’t for the Rams’ No. 1 defense in points and yards allowed, LA’s No. 22 scoring offense in 2020 had no business getting a wild card victory following a 10-6 regular season. And after watching Goff struggle mightily for two seasons following his extension, McVay and the Rams had seen enough. And as we all know by now, Rams GM Les Snead and McVay finally pulled the plug on Goff and made the franchise-altering decision to trade him — along with two first-round picks — to the Detroit Lions for Matthew Stafford.
To be perfectly clear, Cousins hasn’t demonstrated anything remotely close to the same struggles that we saw out of Goff in 2019 or 2020. But then again, Cousins hasn’t sniffed a Super Bowl the way Goff did in 2018.
More often than not, history can serve as the best teacher. And with O’Connell’s connection to the tail-end of Goff’s tenure in Los Angeles, he’s certainly no stranger to getting stuck with the bill in exchange for devastatingly poor quarterback play. Even though O’Connell was still in Washington when the Rams maxed out Goff’s limitations in 2017-18, the Vikings’ head coach is a product of the same offensive coaching staff and system that brought him to the Super Bowl.
With the power of collaboration as the theme of for this new era of Vikings football, O’Connell will almost assuredly draw from these experiences in LA when working towards an answer on what to do with Cousins.
Suppose O’Connell believes that this McVay/Rams offensive scheme can help elevate quarterbacks like it did for Goff. Then, theoretically, the Vikings would be better off allocating that money elsewhere and rolling out a quarterback on a rookie contract over the next handful of years — as long as said rookie quarterback won’t be exposed after two successful seasons.
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say the Vikings can’t find a suitable trade partner for Cousins, nor can they come to terms on an extension with the former Michigan State quarterback. Would O’Connell have the necessary conviction in this scheme to draft a quarterback with the 12th-overall pick, let him sit for a season behind Cousins, and unleash him as the cost-effective face of the franchise in 2023?
A better question might be: If Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell feel strongly about a particular quarterback’s ability to develop in a “redshirt” 2022 season, can the Vikings afford not to take him in this year’s draft?
