The Minnesota Vikings knew they were in trouble when Kirk Cousins limped off the field on Sunday afternoon.
Cousins was playing the best football of his career. The Vikings were overcoming an 0-3 start. They were dismantling their most hated rival, the Green Bay Packers, and none of it mattered because of what was happening in a blue tent. Cousins’ torn Achilles, which was confirmed on Monday, sinks what was becoming a promising season for the Vikings. It also puts the front office in a situation they were trying to avoid.
When the Vikings hired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as general manager, he inherited a toxic situation that had developed in the final years of Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman’s regime. Most fans agreed that the Vikings had to overhaul their front office. Some also believed that a change at quarterback was necessary to move forward completely.
It would have been easy for Adofo-Mensah to hit the reset button. However, the Vikings extended Cousins with a no-trade clause that would keep him in Minnesota through the 2023 season. To some, it was a confusing decision. But it made more sense considering Adofo-Mensah’s thesis statement on the quarterback position in a July 2022 interview with USA Today’s Jori Epstein.
“The one asset where you get nervous about not burning it down is quarterback,” Adofo-Mensah said in the article. “[We have] a good quarterback…but we don’t have Tom Brady. …We don’t have Patrick Mahomes. He added that you’re more likely to win the Super Bowl “if you have that quarterback, [but] it’s very unlikely to have that quarterback.”
Adofo-Mensah’s quote has multiple layers, and it explains why the Vikings stuck with Cousins while also keeping a watchful eye on the future. Cousins is one of the most polarizing players in Vikings history. He’s also one of the most reliable. In his previous five seasons in Minnesota, Cousins threw 30 or more touchdowns three times. He also threw for 4,000 or more passing yards four times.
Cousins was on his way to adding another year to that list with 2,331 yards and 18 touchdowns in the first eight games. However, his injury highlighted one area of his game that many take for granted – his durability.
Since signing with the Vikings, Cousins had missed only one game, and that was due to a positive COVID test. The Netflix documentary Quarterback highlighted his physical resiliency. Cousins soaked in cold tubs to nurse a rib injury and worked with a physical therapist throughout the week to get his body ready to play on Sundays.
Garrett Bradbury also noted Cousins’ durability following Sunday’s win, saying Cousins’ presence was part of the identity of the Vikings.
“It was weird,” Bradbury said. “When the Vikings are out there, Kirk is out there.”
That’s where the second layer of Adofo-Mensah’s comment comes into play. Cousins wasn’t a game-changer like Mahomes or Brady, but he had enough qualities to be a suitable solution for the NFL’s most important position.
If anything, Cousins’ presence bought time for Adofo-Mensah to find his version of Brady or Mahomes. KSTP’s Darren Wolfson noted that the Vikings were “doing their homework” on the quarterbacks in last year’s draft, and it wouldn’t have been surprising if they ultimately decided to take Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker or Kentucky’s Will Levis with their first-round pick.
Network’s Tom Pelissero also touched on a rumor that the Vikings were interested in trading up to the top of the draft to select Alabama quarterback Bryce Young. However, the Carolina Panthers selected Young with the first-overall pick last year.
The process continued this fall as the Vikings have scouted quarterbacks for this year’s draft. A reporter spotted Adofo-Mensah in South Bend a few weeks ago scouting USC’s Caleb Williams. Meanwhile, a pair of top scouts were in Chapel Hill to watch North Carolina’s Drake Maye.
While Williams and Maye are the top quarterbacks in the class, we could speculate that the Vikings have also been doing their homework on other options such as Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., Oregon’s Bo Nix, and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy. But even if those prospects didn’t intrigue Adofo-Mensah, he could rest easy knowing that he had Cousins as a fallback plan.
That’s where things become difficult.
Cousins’ status as a pending free agent made the Vikings’ future at quarterback complicated. However, his injury makes things almost totally inscrutable. Entering his age-36 season, Cousins will be coming off a major injury and might not be the same player he was before.
While that could lower his asking price in free agency, it might also entice other teams to get involved, creating the type of bidding war that Minnesota doesn’t want. Additionally, the Vikings are no longer in a position where they want to find a quarterback. Cousins’ injury puts them in a position where they need to find a quarterback.
A similar situation plagued the Vikings throughout Spielman’s tenure. When Brett Favre retired after the 2010 season, there was no suitable option on the roster. That required Spielman to reach for Christian Ponder in the 2011 draft. When Teddy Bridgewater suffered a devastating injury before the 2016 season, the Vikings immediately traded a first-round pick for Sam Bradford.
After Case Keenum took the Vikings to the NFC Championship Game in 2017, Spielman believed he needed an upgrade. That led him to sign Cousins to the first fully guaranteed contract in NFL history.
A different level of desperation created each of these situations, but they carried the same theme. The parties outside of TCO Performance Center knew that the Vikings needed a quarterback and took advantage by price-gouging them with draft capital or free-agency dollars.
They created an environment the Vikings have been trying to avoid since Adofo-Mensah arrived in Minnesota. However, it certainly makes for an intriguing scenario moving forward.
