EAGAN — In Kirk Cousins’s first conversation with the Twin Cities media since the end of last season, he went on a diatribe about how uncertainty about his future has always been a part of his journey.
Back in old Holland, Michigan, he didn’t have any scholarship offers during his senior year. At Michigan State, nobody saw him as a starting quarterback. Everybody knows what happened in Washington. Heck, there have been three different times it wasn’t clear whether the Minnesota Vikings were going to give him an extension (current situation included).
In total Cousins’s answer was 437 words long but here was the most interesting line: “I learned, you’ve gotta focus on winning football games. And if you win football games and do your part and put your work in, the rest will take care of itself.”
The thing is, Cousins did just win football games. A lot of football games. Thirteen football games. Not only that but in the playoffs against the Giants he went 31-for-39 with 273 yards, two touchdowns and produced 24 points despite a non-existent running game and only 47 yards from Justin Jefferson.
Cousins’s record as a Viking sits at 46-33-1 and he has a 100.9 QB rating over five years. Only four QBs since 2018 have more wins and the only QBs with a better rating since 2018 (min. 1000 passes) are Drew Brees, Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, DeShaun Watson and Russell Wilson with Joe Burrow, Jimmy Garoppolo, Ryan Tannehill and Dak Prescott neck-and-neck.
Now everyone understands the reasons that the Vikings wouldn’t want to extend him. He’s not young, the price tag is high and they have never figured out how to build a good enough roster around him to make a deep playoff run. Maybe the fourth-and-8 thing sticks in their craw as well — football can be brutal like that.
But by modern standards, it’s shocking that he was standing in front of us on Wednesday. Players with this type of resume generally do not accept uncertainty.
It was only one offseason ago that Matt Ryan forced the Atlanta Falcons to trade him after they reportedly looked into acquiring DeShaun Watson. To our east, Aaron Rodgers skipped two offseasons out of irritation with his organization and bullied them into more money and power. Lamar Jackson had his business partner calling around looking for contract offers to put pressure on the Baltimore Ravens.
Other quarterbacks with questions about their game landed pretty lucrative contracts. Kyler Murray is making $46 million per year. Daniel Jones signed for $40 million per season and doesn’t come close to Cousins’s resume. The Saints signed Derek Carr to a four-year, $150 million contract and he’s 16th in QB rating since 2018.
This isn’t like Washington, where he went 26-30-1 and it was still unclear whether he was a product of Sean McVay running bootlegs. He’s made three Pro Bowls in Minnesota.
Yet there he was, standing at the podium, wearing long snapper Andrew DePaola’s bagel shop shirts, talking about Year 2 of Kevin O’Connell’s offense.
It seems that Cousins has become so accustomed to betting on himself that he kinda likes it. After all, how does a man who has made $230 million in cash over his career keep playing the underdog role?
“It’s more the norm than the exception,” Cousins said of not being sure where he will be in a year. “I think the exception is that you have something penciled in for future years. Most of our locker have no idea what’s coming in three or four months, let alone three or four years or next year. So, I feel like I’m one of the guys, like we’re all in this together, that’s the way this thing works, and I think it’s part of what makes this league great.”
Cousins reiterated what he has said all along: That he wants to retire a Viking. Maybe that’s part of the reason for his patience. Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah left the door open in post-draft comments for the Vikings and Cousins to come to an extension agreement at some point and maybe he’s waiting for that to come to fruition. It doesn’t really appear that way at the moment but maybe.
How it actually looks is that the Vikings’ brass doesn’t want to have Cousins as their QB for the entirety of their first contracts as GM/HC but they didn’t have any better options in the draft and they know the team can compete for the division with him under center this year. Thus, an impasse.
It did stand out that, for the second straight year, Cousins said that he has to “earn the right” to finish his career in Minnesota. That doesn’t sound like someone ready to ink an extension. So what does that look like? Does he have to reach the Super Bowl? NFC Championship? Does his age/cost prevent almost anything short of those goals from landing him the deal that his side wants? What if they win 11 games and take the NFC North again but lose in the Divisional Round — is that enough?
One thing that you have to give Cousins is that no player has ever drowned out the noise like him. Metaphorically speaking, he doesn’t have horse blinders, he has a cabin in Montana with no internet or phone service and he’s living off the crops. If Cousins was impacted by contract talks, he wouldn’t be here. He’d be coaching quarterbacks at Holland High School.
“When you read books on the mental part of playing sports, they always emphasize being present, so whether it’s stuff off the field or even within a game, we were just talking in the quarterbacks room about how the game is played one play at a time, and because there’s so much you can’t control at the quarterback position, the best mindset to have is to just think about going 1-0 each play,” Cousins said. “Have that play, and regardless of what happens, the next play and just stay in this mini-world of that play. That’s how you play your best, and the same thing is true of anything else that’s thrown at you in this career, just stay really focused in the moment.”
Living in the moment for him is getting Jordan Addison and Josh Oliver up to speed with the offense. He was excited to talk about the massive difference in his understanding of the scheme, saying that last May he was just trying to understand calls much less nuances. It’s bizarre that this year will mean having the same voice in his headset for a second season in a row for the first time in Minnesota.
It’s plausible that the growth in the offense and change in defensive coordinators will result in a similarly successful regular season and better odds in the playoffs. We know outside distractions won’t hold back Cousins’s play and he’s consistently hovered the team around the 10th best offense during his tenure.
So once again, everyone including Cousins waits to know the future of the Vikings’ QB position. A tradition unlike any other. But Cousins gets it. The one way to show the brass that they should have bought into him long term and solidify himself as the second best QB in team history (nobody’s passing Fran, sorry) is taking the team deep into the postseason.
“It’s all about winning football games at the quarterback position and kind of always has been… That’s the only thing that will ever really matter when you go back and look at something after the fact,” Cousins said.
All that is true. It’s just very unique that he’s willing to give it the old college try again without any security for the future.
