There has been a lot of support for Kirk Cousins in the days after his season-ending injury.
Fans have made tribute videos to the man that they call Kirko Chainz. Players were holding back tears in the locker room moments after he went down. Kevin O’Connell made his support for Cousins clear in a press conference two days later, and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah told reporters that Cousins was playing “some of the best football in the league” before his injury.
But a quote from Adofo-Mensah later in that press conference shed some light on Cousins’ future for next season. Cousins is set to be a free agent, and it seems like the Minnesota Vikings would like to have him back in 2024. Yet, Adofo-Mensah hinted that other factors need to be considered before Cousins is back in Minnesota.
“My want for Kirk to come back isn’t just a me thing,” Adofo-Mensah said. “It’s a negotiation. You come together at a table and try to see if everything works together. We’ll have that dialogue when the time comes.”
Adofo-Mensah may only be stating the facts, but it also paints the reality of the situation. The Vikings would love to have Cousins return next season and possibly beyond. However, that decision belongs to Cousins ultimately.
Let’s go back in time to the past two years. Cousins was a focal point when the Vikings transitioned to O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah as their new brain trust in February 2022. Coming off a tumultuous divorce from former head coach Mike Zimmer, it was possible that O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah would decide to bring in their quarterback and leave the Cousins era behind.
But the Vikings signed Cousins to a fully guaranteed, one-year contract with a no-trade clause a few months later and rode with him. The result was a 13-win season in last year but a 0-3 start this season. In a loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, Cousins’ decision to call his play instead of a timeout when he couldn’t get the play call in his headset felt a lot like the final days of the Zimmer era. However, those whispers disappeared when the Vikings started winning.
In the two games before the injury, Cousins was playing some of the best football of his career. He threw for 652 yards, four touchdowns, and one interception while completing 76.3% of his passes. He led the Vikings to wins over the San Francisco 49ers and Green Bay Packers and was leading the NFL with 18 touchdown passes.
Everyone felt Cousins’ loss immediately when he went onto the cart last Sunday. The players couldn’t contain their thoughts for Cousins in the locker room.
“Kirk is everything on this team,” said Vikings safety Josh Metellus. “He’s everything.”
Harrison Smith played with Cousins through the tumultuous final years of the Zimmer era and also heaped praise on Cousins.
“He’s a dude,” Smith said. “Everybody in here loves him. He’s so much tougher than he gets credit for. He makes these throws and he stares down the barrel and he f—ing slings it in there. I feel for him. I feel for him.”
Dalton Risner signed with the Vikings in Week 3 and had a lot of praise for a man who became his teammate just over a month ago.
I’ve looked up to that man more than I’ve looked up to a lot of people in a long time. The man of character that he is, the man of faith that he is. The first thing I did when I came back in here was check on him and the first thing he asked was ‘Did we win?’ I’ve known the guy for five weeks but that’s a pretty special human being [and] a really selfless human being and someone that I would strive to be like for sure.
The words from the players ushered one vote of confidence to bring Cousins back next season. Then O’Connell gave a full-throated endorsement during Tuesday’s press conference.
You guys know how I feel about Kirk. Kirk knows how I feel about Kirk. I think he was playing as well as anybody in the National Football League and my biggest…one of the hardest parts about coping with this…[is] coping with the fact that I believe that he was experiencing his best season in the National Football League and where we could have gone as a team. Hopefully, we’re going to still get to that place, but I know without Kirk Cousins and that high level of quarterback play we were getting from here week in and week out, it’s going to be a challenge, but like I said, it’s one that we’ve got to accept and try to thrive.
If you’re keeping score at home, the players, the coaches and the general manager all want Cousins back. Vikings ownership hasn’t commented publicly on Cousins, but they probably want him back next season. Cousins told reporters in January that he wanted to finish his career in Minnesota, but he also said he had to “earn the right” to do so when contract negotiations fell apart last May.
“I want to be in Minnesota,” Cousins said. “That’s kind of a no-brainer. Hopefully, we can earn the right to do that.”
So why didn’t the sides agree on an extension last spring? That’s where the negotiations come into play.
Rick Spielman handed contract extensions out like they were Halloween candy, but Adofo-Mensah has taken a more calculated approach. In January, it seemed like the Vikings would get extensions for Cousins, Jefferson, and Hockenson done before the season. But Cousins and Jefferson are still without new contracts, and Hockenson only got his extension after a “hold-in” during training camp.
Minnesota’s insistence on keeping their options open at quarterback next season may have also played a role, but so did Cousins’ previous history as a pending free agent.
Cousins experienced the same situation with the Washington Commanders, who placed the franchise tag on him for three-straight seasons before he hit free agency after the 2017 season. In his process of finding a new team, Cousins leveraged the New York Jets’ interest into a larger offer from the Vikings and signed in the spot he wanted to be all along.
There is nothing wrong with this. People leverage another offer all the time for a slightly higher salary at a job they were going to take in the first place. But it shows the difference between Cousins the quarterback and Cousins the businessman.
Cousins the quarterback has the undying belief of everyone at TCO Performance Center. But he also wants to make sure he’s getting the best deal in what could be the final big contract of his career. That could play out in several different ways when Cousins and the Vikings sit down at the negotiating table next spring. Minnesota could offer Cousins a team-friendly deal, but Cousins could opt to gauge other teams’ interest in free agency.
Could the Commanders be interested in a reunion? Could the Atlanta Falcons look for a quick upgrade instead of drafting a quarterback? Will some other team find themselves in the need of a quarterback? Or could Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan engage in the “tug of war” that Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio suggested back in May?
All of these scenarios could play out this spring. That’s why Cousins didn’t want to waive his no-trade clause. Even if the Vikings came to him in his hospital bed with an iron-clad extension in hand, it doesn’t make sense for him to sign it, knowing that many teams will be interested in his services.
Cousins could be using leverage to get a few extra dollars from the place he wants to be. But it could also be a deciding factor if Adofo-Mensah makes his own iron-clad offer and is unwilling to increase it to keep Cousins.
Everybody wants Cousins to return. However, Cousins will make the final decision on whether he has thrown his last pass for the Vikings.
