After locking in his one year extension with the Vikings, Kirk Cousins will be Minnesota’s QB for the next two seasons at a minimum. Now entering the fifth season in the purple and gold, Cousins is looking for a career year under new management. After the Vikings offered him an extension with $35M guaranteed, you have to ask if he is worth the asking price.
Price vs Production
After signing his new contract, Cousins tied with Russell Wilson for eighth highest paid quarterback. Given what Cousins can do on the field, a contract worth that much seems a bit pricey. Recently, Jeremy Fowler produced an article for ESPN asking more than 50 league executives, coaches, scouts, and players to rank the top 10 NFL quarterbacks. In that list, Wilson earns his keep as the eighth ranked QB. Cousins, however, is nowhere to be found.
After the top 10, there is also an honorable mentions category featuring Lamar Jackson, Derek Carr, and Kyler Murray. In the article, Cousins is at the bottom as the only quarterback not pictured with a line a text reading “also receiving votes”. Meaning, that while he isn’t bad, he isn’t worth mentioning. Why give a quarterback a top 10 contract for mid-tier play? If there is no dramatic uptick in his performance, it’s time for Minnesota management to begin looking elsewhere.
Draft or Free Agency?
Since 2016, the Vikings have only had starting quarterbacks that were acquired through trade or free agency. The last one to be drafted by the Vikings was Teddy Bridgewater back in 2014. Now with an offensive minded head coach, especially one so tied with the quarterback position, that the Vikings would want to draft a quarterback and develop him in house. It seems likely that Minnesota will be studying the quarterback classes of the next two years very intently looking for their next franchise QB. And if this is the case, then tying Cousins to the Vikings for an extra year is great news.
While CJ Stroud and Bryce Young look like the next big things, it can be difficult to bet the house and hope to get either one in the draft. Years of Josh Rosens, Sam Darnolds, and Johnny Manziels can leave a bad taste in an organization’s mouth. And after missing on Christian Ponder, and Bridgewater not being the answer, it just seemed better to take a proven commodity, enter Kirk Cousins. But this Vikings team is under a new management duo with HC Kevin O’Connell and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. It’s time to take risks again.
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