Report: Vikings Violated Rules with Cousins Visit

This is pretty easy to handle so long as these guys don't have emails or texts to the contrary. Players can do whatever they want. Cousins can buy a plane ticket to Minneapolis and reserve a hotel room for a night or two. His agent can even inform the Vikings that Kirk is doing this and will be in town on Wednesday.  

The Vikings cannot make the arrangements for him and should not even say anything about Cousins' visit beyond "OK." It seemed to me that Cousins' agent understood all of this.

Also, weren't all the other deals announced Tuesday with info on years, total payout, and guaranteed money also violations of the rules?

Is it Wednesday yet ?

All the NFL news has been who’s going where

I caught NFLN talking about Cousins and the Vikings early this morning. Of a panel of reporters, one guy started breaking down the reported terms and explained how Cousins will be in Minneapolis Wednesday and have dinner with the team on Thursday.

Another guy on the panel chimes in quick, 'they cant be scheduling visits yet so they cant have actually set up any visits yet.' ... kind of dismissively using the rule to cast doubt on "the visit" added into the details of the report. They then quickly moved on to talking about Cousins impact on the team.

Didnt cross my mind again until now...

... I cannot believe they would have messed this up. It's pretty inexcusable, even though i probably will since we'll have Kirk Cousins and I can probably juggle "draft picks for Super Bowls BABY!!!" like a circus clown... 

How do you dance around the tampering rules like Floyd Mayweather for two weeks, clearly up on the scorecards, only to end the fight with an elbow?

My gut is saying someone didnt understand the rules and they glowingly explained a scheduled visit to the media. Spielman and our front office are always on point with this stuff; maybe the info is from Kirk's side? 

First thing i'd be concerned about in a penalty is a perception that we must have tampered with Cousins; how much incentive is there on the league to drop the hammer?

Why can't you schedule it to occur after FA starts? To me it makes more sense that you can't schedule a visit to occur during the negotiating window. As long as they scheduled it through his agent and didn't contact him directly I wouldn't think anything will come of it. There are certainly much more egregious thing that happen during that period.

keenum was “ready to sign” before cousins. 

Its simply related to "scheduling a visit." Specifically, the announced dinner plans late Wednesday and a facility tour Thursday.

The question is whether or not these "plans" we're deduced/assumed by reporters gathering information from both parties or if this is a leak of hard plans that were actually made.

It is something to keep an eye on. The Chiefs got stripped a pick for doing something similar with Jeremy Maclin years back. The idea now is that there is some wink/nod shit that always happens every year; that you don't get caught without leaving an obvious trail of communication. Something like this simply opens the door to scrutiny and interpretation of the rules. With the Chiefs being made an example of recently, it's probably worth waiting for an update on this...

I also think itd be pretty easy for the reporter who broke the details of the week ahead to say, "hey, it just sounds like thats the plan. They didnt tell me they had agreed on any actual plans yet." I dunno...

The way the NFL has shamelessly pimped the Cousins story, they better not fuck with us!