Mike Zimmer never wanted the Vikings to sign Kirk Cousins

[Guest]

@MaroonBells said:

@JimmyinSD said:

@medaille said:
A lot of what people are complaining about is that we just
had too many goodish players that we had to pay and it catches up with you in
terms of the cap.  We had to do a
mini-blowup.  We had a lot of consistency
for a while, but there needed to be a reboot.  Furthermore, we’re really being hampered by
Hunter and Pierce being out.


I think there’s two main problems with the way we’re
handling Kirk and Kirk himself.  Firstly,
Kirk is not a winner.  He’s an upper middle
of the road QB who at the end of the year will have stats, but he’s not going
to have many statement wins and you can’t trust him to win statement games.  If you don’t have a winner at QB, you need to
be drafting QBs frequently, even when you already have a starter.  That said, I think we’re not really putting
Kirk in a place to excel right now.


From a personnel standpoint, we really screwed up the guards
bad.  I think we all knew it was going to
be a trainwreck, and it still is.  You
can’t have a Kirk Cousins and then have a weak OLine.  It just doesn’t make sense.  We invested in Cook and Jefferson, both look
to be great, but you still have to have a solid foundation, and Spielman just
doesn’t understand that, even on the OLine he still goes for the shiny OTs and
neglects the guards.


From a scheme standpoint, last year, I think we had a scheme
that was well suited for the players we had, both in terms of pros and
cons.  It wasn’t an ideal offense,
because our players limited what we could do, and some defenses could just take
away what we’re good at and we couldn’t counter.  This year, I think we’ve really gotten away
from scheming around our players strengths and weaknesses.  We should never be running an empty back
formation.  It puts too much pressure on
our interior OLine and removes any possibility of a running threat.  It neuters play action, which is one of Kirks
strengths and forces him to be the QB that finds the mismatch and make quick
throws, which he just isn’t that guy.  Furthermore,
I think we do so much better when we get our OLine running sideways and base
our offense around that.  We just need to
avoid getting into situations where our failure at guard catastrophically blows
up the play.

you cant have a 25+ million dollar QB,  pay a quality OL, and still have money left over for a quality DL... thats a team right there OL, DL, and QB  if I can only have 2 of the 3 being high quality,  i will take the lines every time unless you have a HOF type QB that will make chicken salad out of chicken shit OL play,  but I still want that stout DL to make the opposition 1 dimensional and that starts with DTs to take away that run,  people want to point at what went wrong as this or that on our D, it went down hill as Linvals health and ability slipped... his dominace for a couple years is what made that defense special IMO.

I don't agree with that. It's not about the dollar amount. Dollar amount is nebulous. As much as we pay Kirk Cousins, he's the 14th highest paid QB in the NFL. And in terms of percentage of cap spent on the QB position, the Vikings rank 13th. 

Exactly. It ain't the Cousins contract that's the problem. 

[Guest]

@StickyBun said:

@MaroonBells said:

@JimmyinSD said:

@medaille said:
A lot of what people are complaining about is that we just
had too many goodish players that we had to pay and it catches up with you in
terms of the cap.  We had to do a
mini-blowup.  We had a lot of consistency
for a while, but there needed to be a reboot.  Furthermore, we’re really being hampered by
Hunter and Pierce being out.


I think there’s two main problems with the way we’re
handling Kirk and Kirk himself.  Firstly,
Kirk is not a winner.  He’s an upper middle
of the road QB who at the end of the year will have stats, but he’s not going
to have many statement wins and you can’t trust him to win statement games.  If you don’t have a winner at QB, you need to
be drafting QBs frequently, even when you already have a starter.  That said, I think we’re not really putting
Kirk in a place to excel right now.


From a personnel standpoint, we really screwed up the guards
bad.  I think we all knew it was going to
be a trainwreck, and it still is.  You
can’t have a Kirk Cousins and then have a weak OLine.  It just doesn’t make sense.  We invested in Cook and Jefferson, both look
to be great, but you still have to have a solid foundation, and Spielman just
doesn’t understand that, even on the OLine he still goes for the shiny OTs and
neglects the guards.


From a scheme standpoint, last year, I think we had a scheme
that was well suited for the players we had, both in terms of pros and
cons.  It wasn’t an ideal offense,
because our players limited what we could do, and some defenses could just take
away what we’re good at and we couldn’t counter.  This year, I think we’ve really gotten away
from scheming around our players strengths and weaknesses.  We should never be running an empty back
formation.  It puts too much pressure on
our interior OLine and removes any possibility of a running threat.  It neuters play action, which is one of Kirks
strengths and forces him to be the QB that finds the mismatch and make quick
throws, which he just isn’t that guy.  Furthermore,
I think we do so much better when we get our OLine running sideways and base
our offense around that.  We just need to
avoid getting into situations where our failure at guard catastrophically blows
up the play.

you cant have a 25+ million dollar QB,  pay a quality OL, and still have money left over for a quality DL... thats a team right there OL, DL, and QB  if I can only have 2 of the 3 being high quality,  i will take the lines every time unless you have a HOF type QB that will make chicken salad out of chicken shit OL play,  but I still want that stout DL to make the opposition 1 dimensional and that starts with DTs to take away that run,  people want to point at what went wrong as this or that on our D, it went down hill as Linvals health and ability slipped... his dominace for a couple years is what made that defense special IMO.

I don't agree with that. It's not about the dollar amount. Dollar amount is nebulous. As much as we pay Kirk Cousins, he's the 14th highest paid QB in the NFL. And in terms of percentage of cap spent on the QB position, the Vikings rank 13th. 

Exactly. It ain't the Cousins contract that's the problem. 

The Cousins contract doesn't limit this team from being great, other dumb contracts do as well (Rudolph, Barr, Reiff, and Harris should have been traded or extended). The contract does, however, limit the team on QB possibilities outside of Cousins

[Guest]

I hated the extension. Won't complain about the first contract, but that extension and the way it is set up almost deserves a firing.

[Guest]

@kmillard said:
I hated the extension. Won't complain about the first contract, but that extension and the way it is set up almost deserves a firing.

Fixed that for you.
Our salary cap is obviously a combination of things, QB is one of them, some expensive defensive players (Ngakoue $12M and +$23M for our 2 starting safeties) is another.
But we also have $16M currently on injured reserve - most of it Barr, Hunter, and Elflein.
And I don't see a lot of discussion about Dead Cap, which is a bit more than Cousins' hit at $21.8M. The Vikings' FO has frequently pushed cap money into the future with contract restructures. That's one reason they extended Cousins in March, to lower this year's cap hit at the expense of cap space the next two seasons. And if some key targets or people on this board like Cousins, Barr, and Rudolph are cut this offseason, Dead Cap will be far worse.
In terms of cap space, Spielman paid for the 2016-19 "window" with credit cards that have started to come due, and the Cousins extension was like rolling that debt over to another card that gave immediate freedom to keep shopping (Cook, Ngakoue), but it's going to come due next year with even more interest piled up.