Former general manager Rick Spielman acknowledged that the Minnesota Vikings went all in on Kirk Cousins when they signed him to a $84 million, fully guaranteed contract in 2018. “Once you make that decision, then there’s no turning back,” Spielman said. “We’re going to go all in and we’re going to go as hard as we can with the blessing from the ownership.”
The New York Jets offered Cousins $90 million guaranteed, and his contract reset the quarterback market at $28 million per year. But Cousins said that coming to Minnesota was all about winning. “This is a lifetime deal,” Cousins said. “That’s the goal. Yes, it’s a three-year deal, but the expectation is from both sides we raise our kids here, and if everything goes as planned, we’ll be here a long, long time.”
On Monday, Cousins signed a four-year, $180 million deal with the Atlanta Falcons. They guaranteed him $100 million, meaning Cousins will have earned at least $331 million in his career. That’s not bad for a player the Washington Commanders took in the fourth round of the 2012 draft to back up Robert Griffin III. Cousins has always bet on himself, playing on the franchise tag twice in Washington before signing with the Vikings.
Cousins has always been clear about what he wanted. He has asked for guaranteed contracts, and structure matters to him. “It’s not about the dollars,” Cousins said a coach told him a decade ago. “It’s about what the dollars represent.” Cousins, 35, wanted the Vikings to commit to him for multiple years despite coming off an Achilles injury. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and the front office reasonably didn’t want to take that risk. Cousins left for Atlanta.
There should be no hard feelings here. Beyond the NFL being a business, nobody acted in bad faith. Cousins wanted to play in Minnesota, and the Vikings had to know he was the best option they could put under center this year. But the Falcons were willing to take on more risk. They made Cousins an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he took it.
Cousins’ wife is from Atlanta, and they got married there. Cousins wanted to finish his career in Minnesota, but Atlanta is a reasonable place for him to create a second home. “My kids love their kindergarten,” Cousins said in January. “But you also have to remind yourself, if it comes to it, I’ll have to find a good kindergarten somewhere else.”
The Vikings had to have seen this coming. Not necessarily that Cousins would leave, but that he could. He was the top quarterback on the market, and it only takes one team to go all-in and disrupt Minnesota’s plans. Everyone saw Cousins’ performance against the San Francisco 49ers. Someone was going to gamble on him. The Falcons must feel they are a quarterback away from competing and are willing to risk signing a 35-year-old coming off an Achilles injury.
“Our approach heading into free agency always included layers of contingencies regarding the quarterback position,” Adofo-Mensah said in a statement on Monday. “We are moving forward with plans that allow us to continue building a roster that can compete for a championship.” But what are those plans? The Vikings are reportedly pursuing Sam Darnold. Maybe they end up with Gardner Minshew or Jacoby Brissett. Regardless, it’s unlikely that any of those quarterbacks will give Minnesota a better chance to win next year.
Ultimately, the Vikings have two unknowns they must solve. The first is to ensure they can extend Justin Jefferson, who said he wanted to know Minnesota’s quarterback plans before re-signing. If the Vikings lose Cousins, Jefferson, and Danielle Hunter this offseason, they probably should reset the roster. That likely means a new front office and coaching staff.
Jefferson may re-sign if he likes Minnesota’s draft plans, but the Vikings ended up with the 11th pick because they didn’t tank last year. That means they either must offer enough to move into the top three and take whoever falls or gamble on a quarterback like J.J. McCarthy or Michael Penix. Cousins had value because he could get Jefferson the ball. He represented a certainty that’s nearly impossible to find in the draft.
Quarterbacks are always unknowns in the draft, and Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, and Drake Maye may not end up being the best quarterbacks taken this year. But even with that qualifier, the Vikings are gambling that they can get a signal-caller good enough to keep Jefferson around without a top-three pick. Hindsight is 20/20, but the Monday night win over the Niners increased Cousins’ value and made it harder for Minnesota to get a top pick. Everyone briefly got caught up in Joshua Dobbs mania, but Dobbs was unlikely to take Minnesota on a playoff run.
Ultimately, Minnesota probably would have been better off losing to San Francisco. They should have tanked. Nobody could have known that then, and the Vikings shouldn’t have tried to lose that game. However, great front offices act with the future in mind, and the Vikings focused on winning in 2023 after losing Cousins in Week 8 when they should have been thinking about 2024.
Minnesota couldn’t franchise-tag Cousins and Hunter this offseason. Jefferson wants to be on a winning team, and Cousins has $28.5 million in dead-cap next year and $18 million for three years after that. Most teams that start 0-3 don’t make the playoffs. The Vikings knew all that when Cousins tore his Achilles at Lambeau. Still, they tried to win last year instead of selling at the deadline.
Cousins has shown us he can put up gaudy stats and is a savvy negotiator. But while he has played better in primetime recently, the Vikings spent $185 million on Cousins, and he won one playoff game. Spielman assumed he was the missing piece on a team with a historically good defense in 2017. Adofo-Mensah doubled down on Cousins when O’Connell believed he could get Cousins to another level. Cousins remained relatively the same player he’s always been.
It may not have turned out to be a lifetime deal, and Cousins may not have had playoff success in Minnesota. But he threw for 23,265 yards, had a 101.2 passer rating, and made three Pro Bowls in six seasons with the Vikings. Cousins put up numbers and made life-changing money. He leveraged his play into a $100 million contract in his mid-30s. Things don’t always turn out as planned, but in many ways, he came to Minnesota and left a winner.
