When the Minnesota Vikings decided to move on from Kirk Cousins after the 2023 season, it felt like an effort to avoid the middle ground he occupied. He could operate the offense but rarely drove winning. Without the ability to move up for Drake Maye, they traded up for J.J. McCarthy and took him 10th-overall, hoping he’d become their franchise quarterback.
“We’re really excited about what we were able to do tonight,” Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said after the draft. “Obviously, there was a lot of things outside of our control, so we wanted to make sure that we were ready for every scenario.”
The Vikings initially signed Cousins after their defense led them to the 2017 NFC Championship. He was supposed to be their Trent Dilfer or Joe Flacco, a reliable non-star quarterback who could win a Super Bowl with an elite defense.
Dilfer and Flacco won championships with the Baltimore Ravens despite not being among the league’s best quarterbacks in 2000 and 2012, respectively. Cousins didn’t need to drive winning for the Vikings when they first signed him. He just had to run the offense effectively and keep the defense from tiring out.
However, that dynamic changed by the time Kevin O’Connell took over in 2022. Mike Zimmer’s once-stout defense had fallen apart by 2021. The Vikings hired O’Connell to change the culture and supercharge the offense, and O’Connell felt a veteran like Cousins could run his complicated offense.
Still, Cousins was mainly a Tier 3 quarterback in Minnesota, according to league insiders. Every year before the season starts, The Athletic’s Mike Sando asks 50 NFL coaches and executives to rank every quarterback into four tiers.
- Tier 1 quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, and Josh Allen can carry a team each week.
- Tier 2 quarterbacks like Justin Herbert and Jared Goff can carry a team, but not as consistently.
- Tier 3 players are legitimate starters who need a heavier run game or strong defensive component to win. Veterans like Aaron Rodgers are Tier 3 quarterbacks, but so are younger players like Bo Nix, Drake Maye, and Bryce Young – at least at the start of the season.
- Tier 4 includes unproven players or veterans who shouldn’t start all 17 games. Justin Fields started the season in this group, but so did Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy, and Daniel Jones.
The coaches and executives whom Sando spoke to placed Cousins in Tier 3 this year. That’s where he resided through most of his Vikings tenure, aside from when Netflix’s Quarterback show gave him a bump to Tier 2.
Tier 3 feels fitting for Cousins, given how he played and why the Vikings originally signed him. However, O’Connell likely wants a quarterback who can drive winning – someone who can elevate the players around him.
O’Connell was the Los Angeles Rams’ offensive coordinator before Minnesota hired him. In 2021, they traded Jared Goff, a Tier 3 quarterback, for Matthew Stafford and went on to win the Super Bowl. Stafford was one of only five Tier 1 quarterbacks, alongside Mahomes, Burrow, Allen, and Lamar Jackson.
McCarthy doesn’t need to be a Tier 1 quarterback for the Vikings to win the Super Bowl. They have weapons around him and a talented defense, albeit one that will decline if Brian Flores leaves in the offseason. Still, they likely want McCarthy to become more than a Tier 3 quarterback.
Cousins divided the fanbase because he was good enough to run the offense, but he couldn’t drive winning. He was as good as the talent around him, and so conservative with the ball that he famously threw short of the sticks on fourth-and-eight in Minnesota’s final play of the 2022 playoffs.
Ultimately, the Vikings moved on from Cousins because he had a career-altering Achilles tear in 2023, and the Atlanta Falcons overpaid for him. Still, they were likely looking for a Tier 1 or Tier 2 quarterback to replace Cousins.
Last year’s starter, Sam Darnold, began the year as a Tier 3 quarterback and likely will move to Tier 2 next season. Meanwhile, McCarthy will remain in Tier 4. Perhaps he’s a bust. Then again, it’s more likely he moves up to Tier 3 but stays there – at least early in his career.
If that’s the case, then the Vikings are back to where they started. They’ll have a quarterback who’s good enough to run the offense but doesn’t drive winning, only potentially without a Flores defense. They’ll have a player who occupies that uncomfortable middle ground that divides a fanbase again.
