With Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah replacing the former regime in Minnesota, many fans expected a change in approach in roster-building — and at quarterback. Instead, it’s been a bit of the same with O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah. They opted to take the safer road and extend Kirk Cousins for one more season while lowering his cap hit for this upcoming year.
The move was met with varying reactions from the NFL world. This week on The Rich Eisen Show, Eisen asked O’Connell if Cousins would be able to lead the Minnesota Vikings to a Super Bowl.
O’Connell replied:
I feel really good about the staff that I was able to hire from a leadership standpoint but also just a football intellect and understanding of playing this game at a high level. The one thing that resonates is having those guys turn on the tape and, man for man on our coaching staff, say, ‘We got a pretty good quarterback here.’
Just a day after hosting O’Connell, Eisen had a very different point of view regarding Cousins and his contract, saying, “And his staff, they looked at the film and they said that the guy I guess, then they turn around and say, ‘Why, let’s give them another guaranteed year and an insane amount of money.’”
He quickly followed this with a quip: “Send the pen to the Hall of Fame because he keeps setting records for that sort of thing” in reference to the three contracts that Cousins has received from the Vikings and the large amounts of guaranteed money that have forever altered the quarterback market.
Eisen finished by proclaiming that the Vikings were “going down the same rabbit hole.” Every single time the Vikings extend Cousins, they somehow find themselves in a spot where they have to extend him again to lower his future cap hits and ensure that the franchise won’t lose him in free agency.
