Rumors galore should be expected over the next week as teams flock to Indianapolis for the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Kirk Cousins rumors and reports will be front and center.
One has already popped on Monday thanks to ESPN’s Bill Barnwell predicting that Cousins’ average annual salary when he signs a new contract will be a whopping $51 million.
“Any team hoping to win over the next three years that isn’t in position to land one of the top starters in the 2024 draft should be trying to pursue Cousins,” writes Barnwell. “That’s a group that includes the Broncos, Buccaneers, Falcons, Raiders, Steelers and Titans, with the Dolphins and Seahawks as outside candidates if they move on from their current starters.”
Cousins has sort of intimated that structure and a chance to win will outweigh money in his pursuit of a new contract. But nobody knows if he’s looking for another fully guaranteed contract like Minnesota last gave him and it’s a mystery if he’ll demand three years or be open to a two-year deal.
The Vikings or any team that signs Cousins can slice his 2024 salary cap hit by giving him a sizable signing bonus and backloading the deal, but eventually the team that puts pen to paper will have to pay the piper.
If Barnwell is correct and Cousins gets a three-year deal, that’s $153 million for a soon-to-be 36-year-old quarterback coming off a torn Achilles. At two years it’s still $102 million.
Every team has more money to spend thanks to the 2024 salary cap rising to a record $255.4 million, so a two-year deal worth $100+ million isn’t all that different than a two-year deal worth $90 million at the previous salary cap threshold.
“I don’t think it fundamentally changes a lot from the Vikings perspective,” Purple Insider‘s Matthew Coller told Bring Me The Sports about the salary cap increasing by $30 million. “When the cap goes up, the prices go up for free agents so it doesn’t make it any easier to work around a big QB contract. It may give some other teams more cap room to make Cousins an offer though.”
