Minnesota Vikings fans will always associate Randy Moss with the No. 84. But Kirk Cousins earned part of that mindshare when he signed a historic $84 million fully guaranteed contract with Minnesota in 2018. A year later, Cousins said his goal was to win more after going 8-7-1 in his first year as a starter with the Vikings. He entered the 2019 season with a 34-37-2 career record.
“The next level really is all about winning,” Cousins said at minicamp in 2019. “I’m pretty much a .500 quarterback in my career so far, and I don’t think that’s where you want to be, and that’s not why you are brought in or people are excited about you. If I don’t play well, if I don’t have gaudy statistics, but we win multiple playoff games, the narrative will be I went to the next level.”
Cousins went 10-5 as a starter in 2019 but had a 7-9 record a year later. Cousins entered Mike Zimmer’s final season with a 51-51-2 career record and went 8-8 as a starter in 2021. Kevin O’Connell had worked with Cousins in Washington and believed he was more than a .500 quarterback. O’Connell put Cousins in Sean McVay’s offense, schemed Justin Jefferson open, and told Cousin to throw deep.
The Vikings won 13 games with Cousins under center. In the offseason, he starred in Netflix’s Quarterback series, and people fell in love with his work ethic and Midwest charm. But the durable signal-caller suffered a non-contact Achilles injury in Week 8. He was playing his best football at the time. A week earlier, he had thrown for 378 yards against the San Francisco 49ers on Monday Night Football.
Cousins’ contract voids on March 13, and Minnesota will incur $28.5 million in dead cap. The Vikings want Cousins back. Cousins says he just wants to win. “Ultimately, it is about winning football games, and so that will be the most important thing. Winning football games,” he said as his teammates cleared out their lockers on Monday. “With that, no one thing is in a vacuum. Usually, you win football games because there are some other factors that are really important to me that are going to have to be there to be able to win football games.”
Under O’Connell, the Vikings created a winning environment for Cousins, who has thrived. He has Justin Jefferson, arguably the greatest receiver in football. O’Connell embraced Cousins in a way that Zimmer never did. Minnesota finally had a competent offensive line last season. The Vikings were winners with Cousins last season. And while he contributed to Minnesota’s 0-3 start this year, Cousins led the Vikings to three straight wins without Jefferson and faced a manageable schedule before he got hurt. He has enough to win here.
“At this stage of my career, the dollars are really not what it’s about,” Cousins said. “There’s many, many variables. … You ultimately just want to try to find a fit that makes the most sense. And ultimately that you feel at peace about.”
“There are a lot of factors that go into these things. It is age. It’s injury, but it is also performance,” said Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. “Ultimately, it always comes down to, can you find an agreement that works for both sides and all of those things? But as a player, it is certainly my intention to have him back here.”
Cousins will have suitors. “I’m not going to try to sell myself,” Cousins said. “I kind of like to let people make their own decisions because the league needs quarterbacks. If you’re trying to talk yourself out of a quarterback, then I can’t help you much. The Achilles is going to heal.” The bigger question is term and structure. Someone may offer Cousins three years, and he will probably want the contract fully guaranteed.
But the Vikings likely will only take so much risk with a 35-year-old quarterback coming off an Achilles injury, given they have minimal cap space. Minnesota also should be thinking about the future. They own the 11th pick in the draft, and they should take their future quarterback. “There’s always a succession plan,” Cousins acknowledged. “I don’t think you can do your job as a leader of an organization without saying, ‘What’s our succession plan? What do we have down the pipeline?’ That’s just being responsible and doing due diligence.”
Cousins knows the Vikings will be thinking about the future. He’s a pocket passer, but teams will only incur so much risk with a player coming off an injury. Cousins also wants to win, and Minnesota will need to re-sign Justin Jefferson and Danielle Hunter to be competitive next year. They must also ensure they can extend Christian Darrisaw and build a defense.
Therefore, Cousins could take a one-year deal to bridge the gap to the next quarterback while Jefferson is on his rookie deal. Or he could ask for two years for more security. But it would be hard for the Vikings to guarantee it, knowing how much they must spend on the rest of the roster. Anything more, and Cousins is probably trying to maximize his value over winning. He will leave Minnesota being remembered more for the money he made than the games he won.
