Everyone knows that his cap hit in 2021 is 31 mil and in 2022 it is 45 mil.
Everyone knows that the 2022 salary is guaranteed on the 3rd day of the new league year sometime in March.
One option the Vikings could take is to extend him again beyond 2022 when he will be 35 years old.
I do not like this option. I think he would be our own Matt Ryan. No thanks.
Another option is to draft a young QB to groom and let Cousins contract play out.
I like this option especially the first part.
I think that the Vikings have to look at the 2022 Draft and see which QBs may be coming out.
I see names like Sam Howell, Kedon Slovis, Tyler Shough, Sean Clifford, and maybe some others. Not very good looking.
If they want to get one to groom, and they should, then this is the year to take a shot.
Cousins contract may seem like it is untradeable. I think they can trade him after the 2021 season.
You may ask what team would want to pay him 35 mil for one season? Good question and I have no idea.
If the Vikings would redo his deal and pay him a 10 mil roster bonus and then trade him to a team, then that team only would have to pay him 25 mil for one season.
This would cost the Vikings 20 mil in dead money but save them 25 mil in cap space.
I like this idea.
Maybe the Vikings will pull an Osweiler and include a pick to a team to take Cousins off their hands?
Removing the no trade clause was very wise.
Guaranteeing the 3rd season early is the trade off but I believe he could still be moved.
I could be wrong but I do not see him getting a whole heck of a lot better at age 35.
I have seen him drop back and get pressured and then just continue to go backwards (usually to his right) way too many times.
I have seen him fold up like a turtle way too many times.
I want to see someone who can make something happen when things go awry.
Careful what I wish for eh?
Quote: @MarkSP18 said:
Maybe the Vikings will pull an Osweiler and include a pick to a team to take Cousins off their hands?
Just a friendly FYI. Brock Osweiller was traded for negative capital because he was one of the biggest busts of the last 20 years (and is a big part of why John Elway is no longer in control of Broncos drafts). Brock never played a full season for anyone. The year of the trade you're referring to (his best season), Brock threw for 2900 yards, 15 TDs and 16 INTs. His rating was 72.
The last three seasons, Cousins has averaged 4,000 yards, 31 TDs and 9 INTs for a rating of 102.
So, yeah, maybe!!
Quote: @MaroonBells said:
@ MarkSP18 said:
Maybe the Vikings will pull an Osweiler and include a pick to a team to take Cousins off their hands?
Just a friendly FYI. Brock Osweiller was traded for negative capital because he was one of the biggest busts of the last 20 years (and is a big part of why John Elway is no longer in control of Broncos drafts). Brock never played a full season for anyone. The year of the trade you're referring to (his best season), Brock threw for 2900 yards, 15 TDs and 16 INTs. His rating was 72.
The last three seasons, Cousins has averaged 4,000 yards, 31 TDs and 9 INTs for a rating of 102.
So, yeah, maybe!!
Thanks for the update but I am aware of what Osweiler was able to do before getting traded.
It has nothing to do with the Vikings trying to move Cousins and asking another team to take on the 35 mil in salary for only one season.
I was merely suggesting that they may have to sweeten the pot to get some team to take Cousins off their hands.
If that is what they wanted to do.
Quote: @Jor-El said:
@ mblack said:
@ AGRforever said:
@ Vikergirl said:
If he gets better protection and if they move forward to a more modern offense. They have to take off the training wheels and let it rip, otherwise they won't progress.
We were 14th in passing and 5th in rushing this year.
We were also 4th in total offense. We were only 16 yards per game behind the top team in Kansas City.
Cousis and the offense didnt screw the pooch this year. If Zimmer is to remain coach he needs to figure out WTF went wrong on defense and fix it. The offense is playing at a playoff caliber level.
In as much as I agree with you, stats don't tell the full story. There are at least two games we lost because we could not convert a first down (the Seattle one still stinks). The offense is good but not reliable/consistent. Consistency is what I think we need on offense. The numerous 3 and outs or inability to get first downs in critical moments were very frustrating.
So true, and I'm sitting here reading all these glowing reviews of Cousins and thinking, "Are we the same board that was ready to waive Cousins outright, or even trade him with a high draft pick to a team that would take his contract, when he threw 10 INTs in the first 6 games???" The universal opinion 3 months ago was that Cousins was DONE, worse than Ponder.
I really can't explain how he threw only 3 more INTs in the last 10 games, but he had the same terrible start in 2019, and more of us should be screaming about lack of consistency - or at least damn concerned about it. He isn't as bad overall as we feared at times, but he also isn't as good as his stats suggest.
Because he's Kirk. Why has he led so many squads to basically .500 records? He's up and down like a yo-yo, game in and game out. Look at the 1st qtr vs. Detroit last Sunday. You'd have thought he'd never started an NFL game before. Then he got back on track. But when he has a whole game like that we are sunk and it does happen.
Quote: @comet52 said:
@ Jor-El said:
@ mblack said:
@ AGRforever said:
@ Vikergirl said:
If he gets better protection and if they move forward to a more modern offense. They have to take off the training wheels and let it rip, otherwise they won't progress.
We were 14th in passing and 5th in rushing this year.
We were also 4th in total offense. We were only 16 yards per game behind the top team in Kansas City.
Cousis and the offense didnt screw the pooch this year. If Zimmer is to remain coach he needs to figure out WTF went wrong on defense and fix it. The offense is playing at a playoff caliber level.
In as much as I agree with you, stats don't tell the full story. There are at least two games we lost because we could not convert a first down (the Seattle one still stinks). The offense is good but not reliable/consistent. Consistency is what I think we need on offense. The numerous 3 and outs or inability to get first downs in critical moments were very frustrating.
So true, and I'm sitting here reading all these glowing reviews of Cousins and thinking, "Are we the same board that was ready to waive Cousins outright, or even trade him with a high draft pick to a team that would take his contract, when he threw 10 INTs in the first 6 games???" The universal opinion 3 months ago was that Cousins was DONE, worse than Ponder.
I really can't explain how he threw only 3 more INTs in the last 10 games, but he had the same terrible start in 2019, and more of us should be screaming about lack of consistency - or at least damn concerned about it. He isn't as bad overall as we feared at times, but he also isn't as good as his stats suggest.
Because he's Kirk. Why has he led so many squads to basically .500 records? He's up and down like a yo-yo, game in and game out. Look at the 1st qtr vs. Detroit last Sunday. You'd have thought he'd never started an NFL game before. Then he got back on track. But when he has a whole game like that we are sunk and it does happen.
It's because he plays every position, duh. He just wasnt very good on defense at Washington or at Minnesota the last two years. Once he gets more consistent on defense I definitely expect him to be more reliable as an OL (Cant be the 6th most sacked QB) and QB. I think that 4,200 yards, 35 TD, and his NFL 8th best QB rating of 105 will only get better.
This argument is sort of true, but at the same time, when
you look back on a players career, things average out, and the noise goes away,
and Tom Brady ends up with a record of 230-69, Drew Brees ends up with a record
of 172-114, and Aaron Rodgers ends up with a record of 126-63-1, and Kirk
Cousins ends up with a record of 51-51-2
Elite QBs tilt the field so much and produce wins and produce
titles. Non-Elite QBs don’t. They need a perfect team around them, and their
record and ability to get to the playoffs varies wildly with their surrounding
talent, and even after you get a perfect team, you have to hope that you're relatively injury free that specific year.
If Cousins was a top QB, we would see him tilting the field
more. Maybe there would be a down year
or two or three but his career average would be up.
Is this damning against Cousins? I don’t think so, because there aren’t very
many elite QBs, but your chances of winning a SB with a non-elite QB aren’t
very good.
We really need to have a QB pipeline where we’re drafting
young guys on the regular, trying to find the next elite guy. This mediocre backup QB shit with no
potential needs to stop because if you’re not making progress on finding the
next elite QB and surrounding him with talent to maximize his potential, you’re
not making progress.
Quote: @medaille said:
This argument is sort of true, but at the same time, when
you look back on a players career, things average out, and the noise goes away,
and Tom Brady ends up with a record of 230-69, Drew Brees ends up with a record
of 172-114, and Aaron Rodgers ends up with a record of 126-63-1, and Kirk
Cousins ends up with a record of 51-51-2
Elite QBs tilt the field so much and produce wins and produce
titles. Non-Elite QBs don’t. They need a perfect team around them, and their
record and ability to get to the playoffs varies wildly with their surrounding
talent, and even after you get a perfect team, you have to hope that you're relatively injury free that specific year.
If Cousins was a top QB, we would see him tilting the field
more. Maybe there would be a down year
or two or three but his career average would be up.
Is this damning against Cousins? I don’t think so, because there aren’t very
many elite QBs, but your chances of winning a SB with a non-elite QB aren’t
very good.
We really need to have a QB pipeline where we’re drafting
young guys on the regular, trying to find the next elite guy. This mediocre backup QB shit with no
potential needs to stop because if you’re not making progress on finding the
next elite QB and surrounding him with talent to maximize his potential, you’re
not making progress.
You bring up some fair points. To counter, is Deshaun Watson elite to you? His career WL is 28-25 yet he doesnt take the blame that Cousins does. Cousins is good enough to win a super bowl because recently Joe Flacco, Nick Foles, Eli Manning, and basically one armed Peyton Manning won one in the last 10 years. Kirk frustrates me a lot, but in no way is he a black hole or the biggest issue on the team.
About 30 minutes ago I read that PFF had the Vikings OL as 26th in the NFL. I would imagine our DL was around there too. A couple of years ago I remember Zimmer saying he needed the offense to score 20 points and he felt good. The offense scored over 20 points 13 times this year, and 30 points 6 times. A lot of folks on here want to make Kirk the scapegoat because he is paid a lot, but it's comical that people don't think he's good when in fact he's really good
Quote: @Hawkvike25 said:
@ medaille said:
This argument is sort of true, but at the same time, when
you look back on a players career, things average out, and the noise goes away,
and Tom Brady ends up with a record of 230-69, Drew Brees ends up with a record
of 172-114, and Aaron Rodgers ends up with a record of 126-63-1, and Kirk
Cousins ends up with a record of 51-51-2
Elite QBs tilt the field so much and produce wins and produce
titles. Non-Elite QBs don’t. They need a perfect team around them, and their
record and ability to get to the playoffs varies wildly with their surrounding
talent, and even after you get a perfect team, you have to hope that you're relatively injury free that specific year.
If Cousins was a top QB, we would see him tilting the field
more. Maybe there would be a down year
or two or three but his career average would be up.
Is this damning against Cousins? I don’t think so, because there aren’t very
many elite QBs, but your chances of winning a SB with a non-elite QB aren’t
very good.
We really need to have a QB pipeline where we’re drafting
young guys on the regular, trying to find the next elite guy. This mediocre backup QB shit with no
potential needs to stop because if you’re not making progress on finding the
next elite QB and surrounding him with talent to maximize his potential, you’re
not making progress.
You bring up some fair points. To counter, is Deshaun Watson elite to you? His career WL is 28-25 yet he doesnt take the blame that Cousins does. Cousins is good enough to win a super bowl because recently Joe Flacco, Nick Foles, Eli Manning, and basically one armed Peyton Manning won one in the last 10 years. Kirk frustrates me a lot, but in no way is he a black hole or the biggest issue on the team.
About 30 minutes ago I read that PFF had the Vikings OL as 26th in the NFL. I would imagine our DL was around there too. A couple of years ago I remember Zimmer saying he needed the offense to score 20 points and he felt good. The offense scored over 20 points 13 times this year, and 30 points 6 times. A lot of folks on here want to make Kirk the scapegoat because he is paid a lot, but it's comical that people don't think he's good when in fact he's really good
I don’t really have a good opinion on Watson as I haven’t
seen him play hardly at all and the few times I did see him were pretty
pedestrian. I do think that guys like
Cousins, Stafford, Ryan and Rivers all have a longer track record at being good
but not elite which removes more noise out of the equation. I do agree that Cousins takes more criticism
than a lot of other QBs, but I’m also probably more critical of those other
good but not elite QBs than most people.
I’m not a fan of shitcanning your good QB and then replacing
them with a question mark. I think you
should keep your good QB, and then have a constant stream of guys trying to
outcompete him. I also think if you have
a choice in midlevel FA QBs, you should be price aware. I think in a lot of circumstances, I would
prefer the cheaper guy between two not good enoughs. Like I don’t think Bridgewater or Case is
better than Cousins, but I think that they are much better values and that
having an extra $10M+ goes a long way towards fixing the difference as you try
to find the right guy.
I think the biggest problem with this year wasn’t Cousins,
but it was Spielman and Zimmer not acknowledging that this was a rebuilding
year or that a rebuilding year was necessary.
We’ve been resigning guys left and right that we shouldn’t have. We resigned Diggs and then he forced his way out. We resigned Barr who was good but not
great. Rudolph is on that huge deal and
is ok but not great. We brought in
Pierce. We tagged Harris. We brought in Ngakoue for a few games to
salvage this doomed season? We extended
Cousins contract and backloaded it.
These are all things a team does if they think they have a realistic
chance. At some point we needed to accept
that we would have a subpar season where we were way under the cap to give some
future breathing room, but it looks like we’re going to stretch this rebuild
across several years, and it makes it look like they failed instead of
intentionally doing it. The time to do it
was when we were getting rid of a ton of players anyway.
Quote: @medaille said:
@ Hawkvike25 said:
@ medaille said:
This argument is sort of true, but at the same time, when
you look back on a players career, things average out, and the noise goes away,
and Tom Brady ends up with a record of 230-69, Drew Brees ends up with a record
of 172-114, and Aaron Rodgers ends up with a record of 126-63-1, and Kirk
Cousins ends up with a record of 51-51-2
Elite QBs tilt the field so much and produce wins and produce
titles. Non-Elite QBs don’t. They need a perfect team around them, and their
record and ability to get to the playoffs varies wildly with their surrounding
talent, and even after you get a perfect team, you have to hope that you're relatively injury free that specific year.
If Cousins was a top QB, we would see him tilting the field
more. Maybe there would be a down year
or two or three but his career average would be up.
Is this damning against Cousins? I don’t think so, because there aren’t very
many elite QBs, but your chances of winning a SB with a non-elite QB aren’t
very good.
We really need to have a QB pipeline where we’re drafting
young guys on the regular, trying to find the next elite guy. This mediocre backup QB shit with no
potential needs to stop because if you’re not making progress on finding the
next elite QB and surrounding him with talent to maximize his potential, you’re
not making progress.
You bring up some fair points. To counter, is Deshaun Watson elite to you? His career WL is 28-25 yet he doesnt take the blame that Cousins does. Cousins is good enough to win a super bowl because recently Joe Flacco, Nick Foles, Eli Manning, and basically one armed Peyton Manning won one in the last 10 years. Kirk frustrates me a lot, but in no way is he a black hole or the biggest issue on the team.
About 30 minutes ago I read that PFF had the Vikings OL as 26th in the NFL. I would imagine our DL was around there too. A couple of years ago I remember Zimmer saying he needed the offense to score 20 points and he felt good. The offense scored over 20 points 13 times this year, and 30 points 6 times. A lot of folks on here want to make Kirk the scapegoat because he is paid a lot, but it's comical that people don't think he's good when in fact he's really good
I don’t really have a good opinion on Watson as I haven’t
seen him play hardly at all and the few times I did see him were pretty
pedestrian. I do think that guys like
Cousins, Stafford, Ryan and Rivers all have a longer track record at being good
but not elite which removes more noise out of the equation. I do agree that Cousins takes more criticism
than a lot of other QBs, but I’m also probably more critical of those other
good but not elite QBs than most people.
I’m not a fan of shitcanning your good QB and then replacing
them with a question mark. I think you
should keep your good QB, and then have a constant stream of guys trying to
outcompete him. I also think if you have
a choice in midlevel FA QBs, you should be price aware. I think in a lot of circumstances, I would
prefer the cheaper guy between two not good enoughs. Like I don’t think Bridgewater or Case is
better than Cousins, but I think that they are much better values and that
having an extra $10M+ goes a long way towards fixing the difference as you try
to find the right guy.
I think the biggest problem with this year wasn’t Cousins,
but it was Spielman and Zimmer not acknowledging that this was a rebuilding
year or that a rebuilding year was necessary.
We’ve been resigning guys left and right that we shouldn’t have. We resigned Diggs and then he forced his way out. We resigned Barr who was good but not
great. Rudolph is on that huge deal and
is ok but not great. We brought in
Pierce. We tagged Harris. We brought in Ngakoue for a few games to
salvage this doomed season? We extended
Cousins contract and backloaded it.
These are all things a team does if they think they have a realistic
chance. At some point we needed to accept
that we would have a subpar season where we were way under the cap to give some
future breathing room, but it looks like we’re going to stretch this rebuild
across several years, and it makes it look like they failed instead of
intentionally doing it. The time to do it
was when we were getting rid of a ton of players anyway.
Ok, we are in agreeance on basically everything in your last paragraph. Wish we would have done things differently last offseason from a contract and FA perspective but nothing we can do now
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