Mike Zimmer never wanted the Vikings to sign Kirk Cousins
“The thing that I told Rick (Spielman) was, when we sat down in meetings, I said, ‘look, we’ve won this many games in these many years because of this football team.’ Because we’ve played really good on defense for the most part. This year, obviously, we played so much better on offense and we were able to go further than what a lot of people thought we would. So it’s important that we continue to put the pieces in place on defense. What I don’t want to do is say, ‘okay, (here) is this one thing – we’re going to do this and we’re going to take away from the rest of the things that have gotten us to this point.’ So that’s the other thing. Rob Brzezinski, our cap guy, does an outstanding job of saying, ‘okay, if we do this, then we’re going to have to give up here. If we do this, then we’re going to have to do this. If we do this, we can add here or we can add there.’ So I think all of those things come into play.”Heading into this press conference, rumors had already begun to swirl about Minnesota having interest in signing Cousins. Judging from Zimmer’s comments, it didn’t sound like he was happy with the Vikings investing a good portion of their salary cap into signing a high-priced quarterback. Minnesota’s head coach saw what worked well for his team during his first four seasons and he didn’t think spending a lot of money on someone like Cousins was going to help. In fact, based on Zimmer’s comments from above, one can make the assumption that he felt that signing Cousins was going to have a negative impact on the Vikings’ future. And what do you know? Zimmer was right. Remember how we mentioned earlier that Minnesota won 60 percent of their games during Zimmer’s first four years with the team? Well, the Vikings have only earned victories in 50 percent of their matchups since they signed Cousins in 2018 and it’s not just a coincidence. Minnesota has attempted to provide the veteran quarterback with a number of weapons during his tenure with the team while also doing what they can tailor the offense around his strengths. But Cousins still hasn’t been able to take his game to the top level like so many felt he could when he first signed with the Vikings. Does Zimmer deserve a good amount of blame for Minnesota’s 1-5 start this season? Yes, of course he does, he’s the head coach. But let’s not act like Cousins hasn’t been a gigantic reason for the Vikings’ lack of success this year either. https://thevikingage.com/2020/10/19/mike-zimmer-minnesota-vikings-kirk-cousins/
Matt Schuab is a FA at the end of the season (he knows Kubiak's system). His contract with Atlanta was a 2 year 3 million deal. Cut Cousins and sign Schuab as a bridge QB.
No reason to keep Cousins. Move on. Too many cheap veterans in FA that can give us what Cousins brings to table. Heck I wouldn't mind a year or two of Fitzmagic (another 2021 FA). Any cheap veteran can win 5 or 6 games and groom a rookie.
@"Carl Knowles" said: Matt Schuab is a FA at the end of the season (he knows Kubiak's system). His contract with Atlanta was a 2 year 3 million deal. Cut Cousins and sign Schuab as a bridge QB.No reason to keep Cousins. Move on. Too many cheap veterans in FA that can give us what Cousins brings to table. Heck I wouldn't mind a year or two of Fitzmagic (another 2021 FA). Any cheap veteran can win 5 or 6 games and groom a rookie.
Thats an interesting take...Will be interesting to watch this unfold over the next 6 mos.
@"PSBLAKE" said:That's just it. I don't think the mistake was in signing Cousins. The mistake was the contract they gave him. Cousins is what he always has been. No harm in taking a shot with him. But to not have a way out, or a plan B, is inexcusable. Ownership and the front office compounded what was already a mistake with the extension. I know they thought they were competitive. Hope they have learned something from this.@"Vikergirl" said: So they have to make a decision by March and a deal by June. Cousins agent certainly made a good deal for his client. horribly one sided contract.
@"jargomcfargo" said:@"PSBLAKE" said:That's just it. I don't think the mistake was in signing Cousins. The mistake was the contract they gave him. Cousins is what he always has been. No harm in taking a shot with him. But to not have a way out, or a plan B, is inexcusable. Ownership and the front office compounded what was already a mistake with the extension. I know they thought they were competitive. Hope they have learned something from this.@"Vikergirl" said: So they have to make a decision by March and a deal by June. Cousins agent certainly made a good deal for his client. horribly one sided contract.We always hear how close Zim and Rick are. I wonder if that bit us in the rear a little bit this year. Of course the coach is going to say we can be competitive, Any Given Sunday, yadda yadda yadda. That's fine and you want a coach to think that way.
But it's the GM's job to recognize the roster for what it is, and to think more long-term rather than just focusing on one season. In 2020, Rick did not do that. In fairness to Rick, most of this board was pretty optimistic about this season before it started also. He's the GM though, and should've known better.
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.
@"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.
@"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.
NFL's highest-paid quarterbacks
- Average annual salary
Rank Salary QB Team 1. $45 million Patrick Mahomes Chiefs 2. $39 million Deshaun Watson Texans 3. $35 million Russell Wilson Seahawks 4. $34 million Ben Roethlisberger Steelers T5. $33.5 million Jared Goff Rams T5. $33.5 million Aaron Rodgers Packers 7. $33 million Kirk Cousins Vikings 8. $32 million Carson Wentz Eagles 9. $31.4 million (tag) Dak Prescott Cowboys 10. $30 million Matt Ryan Falcons
@"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.
The Cousins contract certainly sucks, but I cringe every time I am reminded we collectively pay Barr and Rudolph over $20MM per year. Why in the hell would we agree to do that? Rudolph has 66 receiving yards and 1 TD this year, lolz that's it! Barr is injured and that's unfortunate but he's so unbelievably overrated. Those two really add to our problem of not being able to afford better Guards or another DT.
@"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.
@"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
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.
@"kmillard" said: I hated the extension. Won't complain about the first contract, but that extension and the way it is set upFixed 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.almostdeserves a firing.
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