Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Emergency podcast: The Vikings actually extended Kirk Cousins

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Matthew Coller and Paul Hodowanic react to the breaking news that the Vikings extended Kirk Cousins through the 2023 season with a no-trade clause. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, everybody, it happened. Paul Holowanek and I earlier today recorded a podcast knowing that there would be Kirk Cousins news if we just recorded the podcast. Matthew Collar, Paul here to react to the Minnesota Vikings extending Kirk Cousins in a very half measure-ish type of way, where they have given him a one-year extension that goes through 2023 they have tacked on two voidable years to lower his cap hit and given him because he has the greatest agent in the history of the entire universe a no trade clause through 2023 uh paul there are parts of this that I understand and parts of this that I do not. I understand the voidable years part of it

to lower his cap hit. I do not understand in any way, shape or form, giving him a no trade clause. There are the part of trying to do something to lower his cap hit to build the roster around him. I totally understand. The part about completely overhauling your head coach, your general manager and your front office philosophy, but leaving Kirk cousins as your quarterback,

the person who has now been a quarterback for two different franchises that have not gone anywhere aside from the first round of the playoffs and with one playoff win against the new Orleans saints that have been stuck and marred in mediocrity that why a new general manager and head coach getting their first shot would want to lock themselves into a quarterback with that track record that I do not understand why they would give him no trade clause. I do not understand because now the first two years of a four-year contract for Kweisi Adafo Mensah and presumably Kevin O'Connell is set in its ways with this quarterback, why they would have the arrogance to believe that they have the answers that no one else has had.

Why the ownership would think, yes, the answer was everything else except for Kirk Cousins. And we were right to sign him, but wrong on other levels is very confusing to me. And the path to how this is supposed to work out different and any argument that Kweisi Adafo Mensah and Kevin O'Connell are different from the previous people who ran this organization, I don't understand. That's where I have to begin this, Paul, because I don't understand how anyone could tell me how Kweisi Adafo Mensah and his Wall Street background came up with this as an idea. And I don't understand how Kevin O'Connell, a former NFL quarterback who just saw Matthew Stafford and his god arm win the Super Bowl,

could come here and look at this and say, yes, this is exactly what I want. How you could assess the locker room and the lack of leadership and the selfishness and all the things, how you could look at the data and see all the numbers that suggest that Kirk Cousins is essentially a first read type of quarterback who offers nothing beyond that and say, yes, this is what I want for my franchise. I have to tell you, I don't understand it, but I do think that fear is a very serious driver of decisions in the NFL. And I believe that the Vikings did this because they are afraid to be bad. They are afraid to make the wrong quarterback pick.

They don't believe in this quarterback class, which is fine. But other people who haven't believed in quarterback classes in the past have benefited greatly from that. The league didn't believe in Lamar Jackson, believe that did not believe in Josh Allen to get, to let him get where he got. It is a very, very surprising thing to me that they would go all the way this route, not some of the way, which is what I left the combine expecting that they would try to do something to lower his cap hit, but to go all the way in on Kirk Cousins with a no trade clause means that the next two years of your lives, Minnesota Vikings fans, you better really hope it was Mike Zimmer's fault. You better really hope Mike Zimmer had no damn clue what he was doing.

You better really hope that Rick Spielman had no damn clue what he was doing. You better hope that these guys can draft brilliantly, can manage the cap brilliantly, can hit on every free agent, can build the best offensive line, can build the best defense, have the kicker make his kicks, have the fumbles bounce to you, because that is the reality of having a quarterback at this price with this talent. And I think, Paul, that it's a very tough day for people who expected a change to happen here that would ultimately slingshot this franchise toward a super bowl because to me you are no closer to a super bowl today than you were last year or the

year before or the year before or the year before that and i am going to have to be proven otherwise throughout the course of this season and this off season. But it is a very, very difficult needle to thread with a quarterback at this price and with this talent level and why they would allow it to lock themselves in and give them no flexibility even after this year. I just can't quite wrap my head around. This gives me the idea that there's really no breathing room for Kweisi and Kevin O'Connell now. They are now forced to win right away. There is no, we're getting our feet under us as a first-time head coach, as a first-time GM. You have now committed

to this quarterback who lots of strong offensive minds have tried to work with, tried to make really, really good. McVay, Shanahan, Kubiak, both Kubiaks, Stefanski. And the farthest any of them ever got was the second round of the playoffs. And so now Kevin O'Connell is hitching his wagon to this and saying, I am the person that can get this done. And maybe he can, but history shows it's a tough task to get there. And this, this really just like, not, not that all fans wanted to get rid of Kirk Cousins. Obviously there was a big segment that wanted to keep him, but any, you know, like, like the, any goodwill that they had built up now, they've cashed in on, we're going to keep Kirk Cousins and we're going to try to win right away. And if it doesn't work right away, I don't know

now if they can pivot from this, this move, although just a one-year contract extension, even if they, this was kind of an off-ramp, maybe this is an off-ramp for them. They still have the avoidable years, which is going to add considerable money on for two seasons, which if they sign a rookie quarterback, slightly nullifies the rookie quarterback contract, because you're going to be paying a rookie quarterback and you're going to be paying Kirk Cousins nullified contract. So even if this is only viewed as we want a one-year window to see what we can do with Kirk Cousins, and if we don't get him, we're going to get rid of him. You have now his money on the books for three more years. So the benefit of that rookie contract of a quarterback is now gone because you are going to

be paying Kirk Cousins well into the mid 2020s. And so, I mean, I was stunned when I saw the text, I don't know exactly where to begin. I mean, you laid it all right out there, but I was stunned that it was a year. I was even more stunned that there was a no trade clause. I don't know if I fully expected this deal makes it seem like Kirk cousins had every bit of leverage in the world. And I don't, I didn't, I don't know if I saw that.

And so that tells me they wanted him back and Kirk knew they wanted him back in. He just got a no trade clause. He got voidable years. He got a guaranteed contract. And then if he wants to leave after this year, he's still going to be paid by the Vikings. He's going to be like, I man, I mean, i don't know matt well i don't i don't know his uh cap hit is still

going to be in the 30 million range which will still make up around 14 of the total cap which is more than you want to shoot for as a team with a quarterback on any given year. I was having this conversation actually with somebody who is very knowledgeable about the salary cap at the combine who said, look, you know, 10% is really about that mark that you want to go for. And even if you look at last year where you could say, well, Matthew Stafford, this or that, all the Rams and they did this and so forth. But Matthew Stafford, I believe had $11 million less on his cap than Kirk Cousins did. And he was under $20 million for, or not $20 million, but under $30 million for his salary cap hit for last year. And not to mention that that team in order to get Matthew Stafford to the Super Bowl, which I'm sure we are going to hear about when Kevin O'Connell talks,

is, well, this is what happened in Los Angeles. But that team needed Aaron Donald, who is the greatest player of a generation. They needed Jalen Ramsey. They needed Leonard Floyd, Odell Beckham. They needed Cooper Cup, who is the most unstoppable wide receiver. They needed the best pass blocking offensive line in the entire NFL. And I'm not saying that these things are impossible to do for the Vikings over the next two years. And I mean, what just happened is they gave themselves

some things to work with here with free agency, where they must believe that they have a free agency plan. This changes up all of our draft sims. So a quarterback is no longer part of it. It's very possible that they looked at the 2022 or I'm sorry, 2023 draft class and said, while there's a lot better quarterback prospects, we'll draft one, then play it out with Kirk Cousins and then decide that we're going to go forward with a new quarterback. But that still means that you are locked into someone that has no record of success. And you are locked in at a high price and a price that extends on to the future and no ability to move on from that person.

And the other thing about this too that just doesn't quite add up is that the Indianapolis Colts and the Carolina Panthers and the new Orleans saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers, all of these teams, they have a lot of reason to trade for Kirk cousins. And I don't know that we'll ever hear what the offers were and maybe that played a big role in it. But if there's offers on the table that are even similar to Carson Wentz, then why did you decide that you needed to do this and this was a better option?

If they had played it out on a $45 million deal for this year and worked the cap around it, I would have been much more supportive of that. I would have thought that was much smarter than deciding to add a year on with the no trade clause part of it. Because if the no trade clause was not part of this, I would have sort of nodded like,

okay, I see what you're doing here. You're lowering it for this year and then you could still potentially draft a quarterback and have the succession plan and all these types of things. But now I really don't know how you can come in and tell the world we have different ideas. Which ideas do you have that the previous people did not think of?

And we criticized them a lot. We certainly did. And there were panicked moves that they had that they deserve to be criticized for and that ultimately hurt them. So when you trade for a kick ultimately hurt them. So when you trade for a kicker slash punter, when you trade for Chris Herndon, when you trade for Yannick Ngakwe, but the reality of the NFL is you can have all the analytics in the world and all the Wall Street background in the world, but some moves you make will go right. And some moves you

make will go wrong. Some draft picks you make will go right. And some draft picks you make will go wrong. And when you have Kirk Cousins and you're drafting every year between 12 and 20, it's very hard to land yourself a great player in the draft that's going to change your entire universe. The Vikings honestly built their first group that won through the luckiest draft anyone's ever seen. They got three great players and one good player in 2015. The likelihood of that happening to anyone is very low, but now all of a sudden it becomes imperative that they hit on every draft

pick. And the other part of this too, is as we evaluate this, you now better win. That's it. That this next year, NFC championship and anything short of that is a massive disappointment. This is not get in the playoffs, losing the first round and you get patted on the head. You are telling your fans that Kirk Cousins and Kevin O'Connell and whoever you bring in to rebuild this team right away is going to compete for a championship because otherwise it's ludicrous to do something like this if that's not the case. So what I can't see and what we'll withhold judgment on over the next week is how that's supposed to happen. You cannot come in now as Kweisi Adafo Mensah and say patience. I was willing to step back and give them all the patience in the world

if they were going to take a longer route there. But I have a friend in Buffalo who used to compare it to this study they did once where they put marshmallows in front of kids and they said, you can have two marshmallows if you wait 10 minutes to eat the first one. But if you eat the first one right away, you only get the first one. And I think most Vikings fans have come to understand the value of waiting that 10 minutes, but they didn't wait the 10 minutes. They ate the first marshmallow and they said, one is fine with us. And it's hard to look at this and say that this is a legitimate play to reach a Super Bowl because all the evidence points toward that. And I saw our friend Eric Eager tweet the other day that every Super Bowl outside of

one since 2012 has included a quarterback on a rookie contract. I mean, the evidence is just all there. And so why a person who is so rooted in making evidence-based decisions decided to go completely against the evidence, I don't understand. But the story I've told on the show before, Paul, and I'll leave the door open for this if I hear it, then I'll say it. I don't know if I will, is when the Buffalo B bills were playing in the playoffs in 1999 and the owner told wade phillips who he had to play a quarterback and it is possible that the wilfs told these guys this is your quarterback and we want you to extend kirk cousins because we

don't want to go 5 and 12 and i argue in some of the evidence, some of the research I've been doing even today, actually something I was working on for tomorrow and it just went down the toilet. But I'll tell you about it in a second though. But I mean, the evidence to me suggests that you can remain competitive while transitioning to another quarterback. And I think a lot of teams have done this. Baltimore is a good example of this, where they drafted Lamar Jackson. They still had Joe Flacco. And then they transitioned to Lamar Jackson. And he has taken them to new heights as a franchise,

or at least in the regular season. We'll see if he eventually goes somewhere beyond that. But even the Dallas Cowboys sort of lucked into this with Dak Prescott. It almost never happens. But they take Dak Prescott. It almost never happens, but you know, they take that Dak Prescott, they transition out of Tony Romo and into Dak Prescott and never had a fall off where they went down to be complete garbage. And I think that there's a lot of examples of that. And if there was any draft that actually would have been good for that, it was probably this one because you can have your pick of the quarterbacks maybe outside of Malik Willis, but the other quarterbacks are going to be available at number 12.

And you could say, all right, we're taking Kenny Pickett. We're taking Desmond Ritter, whoever we want to go forward. And I will say that if none of these quarterbacks go in the first round, if the first quarterback is taken, you know, with the second round pick, then I will, then I'll back off that point. Then I'll say, okay, well, the NFL didn't think anybody was a first round pick. So I guess I understand it. They're going to kick the ball down the road. I doubt that's going to happen. I think that there will be several first round quarterbacks and I would not be surprised historically if any of them turn out to be either good or great or take a team to the Super Bowl or whatever else it might be. So, you know, I know that this is kind of letting all of the points

out at once and not giving you space to make points, Paul, and I'm sorry, but it's just sort of, you know, all kind of a little bit like muddy of why the decision was made to do it this way. And once again, I mean, boy, the irony, the first day in 2020, a free agency, Rick Spielman signs his fate to get fired as the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings. And is it too aggressive to say Kweisi Adafo-Mensa just did the same thing? Yeah, I won't go there yet because this is only his first offseason but yeah i to me this now all this kind of rests on quacey uh because at least in my view uh yes kevin o'connell could be a great offensive coordinator but kirk has worked with many great offensive coordinators i think it's safe to assume kevin stefanski was a great offensive coordinators. I think it's safe to assume Kevin Stefanski was a great offensive coordinator.

Gary Kubiak is a hall of fame coach. Sean McVay coached him at one point. Kyle Shanahan is known to love Kirk Cousins. Like something about Kirk Cousins gets some of these top offensive coordinators just so, so excited. So I guess you can't blame Kevin O'Connell. He's not the only one that has fallen into this trap of thinking they can craft something around Kirk Cousins. But I think, you know, with Stefanski, with Kubiak, they were doing a lot of really, really good things

schematically to get Kirk in the right situations. They were rolling him out. They were heavy play action. They were relying a lot on the run game. All these things make sense for a Kirk offense. I'm not sure how much you're changing that and how much schematics is changing the way Kirk Cousins performs. Maybe you don't run on second and 10 as much. Maybe that helps a little bit. But in general, I think they did a pretty good job of getting what you could out of Kirk Cousins. So this relies more on Kwesi. What can he do now with the cap space that they got? I'm seeing a little bit different in terms of what his cap number is going to be right at this moment. I think Brad Spielberger said it just put him under the cap, but I think

I just saw a Chad Graff tweet that says his cap hits now down to 15 million for this year, which would open up more than what's under the cap. Either way, they're not flush with capital at this point. Just because they did this extension with Kirk doesn't mean Daniil's coming back, doesn't mean Thielen's coming back. All those are still on the table. They didn't just wipe this contract clean. They can now sign just a bevy of free agents.

They still are going to fight to get under that number, to sign all their draft picks, and to improve the roster while not bringing back i would i would imagine they're not virtually bringing back any of the free agents the vikings had on their team last year i don't think patrick peterson's coming back now i don't think many of these players would be coming back so he's going to be tasked uh quacey is with really really reshaping this roster and so i i think most of the pressure goes on to him. What can he do now at this point? Because we've seen better coaches than Kevin O'Connell fail at Kirk cousins. And so I

think the best case is he runs an offense. That's been pretty similar to what we've seen in the past. Maybe they're a little bit more pass heavy, uh, just in general, because he's the head coach. He can kind of control that while Zimmer couldn't. So maybe you're getting some marginal improvement because you're more focused on the pass game. But from a schematic standpoint, I think they've done pretty well in the past with Kirk. So this relies on what can Kweisi do? What can he do around the edges of what can he do with his analytics background to find guys that maybe people aren't valuing?

What can he do signing someone to a big contract that he thinks deserves it? Like all these now he goes under the microscope a little bit. And just in general, I find it really ironic that the Wilfs, for the most case, have hired the exact opposite of Spielman and Zimmer. They have hired the exact opposite people. They had a scout GM. Now they're going to go to an analytical mind. They had a defense, an old curmudgeon eat defensive coach. Now they're going to a very positive offensive coach forward thinking.

They, they seem to be making all these, they're making changes with their trainer. They're doing all these different changes, except the one piece that they can't seem to get rid of is the most important piece out of all of them he's more important than the gm he's more important than the coach like kirk cousins is the most important person in the vikings franchise bar none and they changed everything else around it but the fact that they didn't change the quarterback feels like not all of it's for not but it's not gonna make as big of a difference as changing the quarterback would have. Like it's, it's the one piece that they decided to keep out of everything. And it is the most consequential piece. And that, that confuses me. Folks support for purple insider is brought to

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saying those other guys really destroyed all of your chances to win and not us. Now, here's the problem with that. Mike Zimmer has only 0.07 difference in terms of winning percentage for his career from Bill Parcells. Like Mike Zimmer has a win percentage of very similar to marv levy who's one of the great coaches in the history of the national football league uh in the first part of his run as the head coach with a rookie quarterback contract by the way which he was able to take teddy bridgewater who at best was probably going to be about the 10th best quarterback in the league if he never had the knee injury i don't think anyone has illusions that he was going to be about the 10th best quarterback in the league if he never had the knee injury. I don't think anyone has illusions that he was going to be Tom Brady. And he was able to win the division.

And two years later, they're able to go to the NFC Championship. And, you know, things had to go right. And they did spend some money on Sam Bradford there and his cap hit and so forth. But they were able to put themselves in position to be a great team through the first run of that. And Mike Zimmer won a lot of football games. And Mike Zimmer was talked about before Kirk Cousins got here as one of the elite coaches in the National Football League and had a case in 2017 for being coach of the year. And then you go 2018 and beyond. And all of a sudden now he is the worst coach in the world. And your coaching

upgrade is huge. rick spielman builds this first team that goes to the nfc championship game with honestly a lot of very good moves great draft picks uh that they hit on development players that they hit on udfas that they found that turned into good players signings that were excellent terence newman linval joseph all these things they find stefan diggs they find adam phelan from a tryval Joseph, all these things. They find Stefan Diggs. They find Adam Thielen from a tryout. They have all these, you know, he even rebuilt an offensive line once in 2017 with Riley Reif and Mike Remmers, who were overall very good signings. And what you're saying is they had no idea what they were doing because the thing about

feeling like you're close is it's such a myth in the NFL. If you're absolutely terrible, everyone kind of knows where you're at. But I remember Justice Mosqueda, who writes about the Packers and is a very smart mind. He said that every team who has eight wins thinks that they're like one or two pieces away from playing for the Super Bowl. But if the Vikings added another half of their win total, they would have only gotten to 12 last year if they had added four more wins. And the other thing is they have so many players who are on the outs. Anthony Barr played well for

them. Patrick Peterson played well for them. These players are leaving and now you have to replace them and you have to develop all new players and if his cap hit is only 15 million for this year let me tell you why that's actually a problem because you're going to have his lowest cap hit in the year where you're the least likely to win because your roster is not close and so you could look at it and say well okay well 15, you can work around that. But not really though, because who are you signing that is changing the world of the Vikings? Who are you signing that's giving you four more wins from where you were last year?

And that's how we have to look at it in terms of the distance from being a legitimate contender. Also, Aaron Rodgers is back. Also, Tom Brady is suddenly back, which we have to talk about for a minute. But like, what? Didn't you just retire? So I guess Adam Schefter now was wrong.

He went from being right to wrong about his initial report. But Tom Brady is back in the NFC. Deshaun Watson might be showing up in the NFC. The Detroit Lions are making plays already. I see reports. They're going to make plays for big free agents and things like that. And I don't think they're going to be great, but I also think the way they played at the end of last year,

they showed progress and development of some of their players. They're not winning three games. They're probably winning seven. And I just have a tough time seeing them signing a player, two players. And as you said, there's more moves still here to come. I mean, you can't go into next year with Daniil Hunter's current cap hit. You can't go into next year with Adam Thielens or even, you know, Dalvin Cook is very highly paid.

I mean, you still have to make space beyond that if you're going to sign players of any sort of significance and also how much outside of the quarterback can one player or two players change your fate? I think what we've learned over the last couple of years is the answer is it's the quarterback is what gets you to a certain point. And then it's the complete unit for everything else. The Atlanta Falcons won four games one year with Julio Jones on their team, and he caught a bunch of passes. There were years where Larry Fitzgerald, the greatest receiver in the league for a while, caught a hundred passes, but the quarterback wasn't great and their team

wasn't great and they won four or five games. So Justin Jefferson is a huge part of this, but they've had him the last two years. He's never set foot in the playoffs. So that's not different. Is Adam Thielen improving? He's going to be 32. How are you massively improving the offensive line and the defensive line and the linebackers and the secondary all at once this offseason to be great this offseason where you have this lower cap hit? Because then the cap hit goes right back up to next year in 2023, which is really when it needs

to be low because that's when you can spend. And if somebody says, well, the cap is going up, I'm going to lose it because it goes up for everyone. It doesn't just go up for you. That just means the free agents make more money. That doesn't mean that you magically get this potion that gives you extra cap space. Yeah. And their extension wasn't like four years at the current market rate. So then in year three and four, you're getting more of a seal for what Kirk Cousins is going to be. It's a one-year deal. You know why? Because the cap, the TV deal's coming, the cap's going to spike and Kirk next year, they're probably in the same position they are in right now. Kirk has a no trade clause. So that even ups his leverage. So what's to say next year, if they make the playoffs or if they miss the playoffs

and they decide, okay, we're still only a couple of moves away. We got to restructure his cap again. We got to restructure the number again. What's to say this isn't just going to continue to happen every year to get his number lower. That's what has been happening these last couple of years. And now that it's a one-year deal, I don't think it changes. I think next year we could be in the exact same spot that says, all right, well, this cap number is 40 million going into next year. I don't think they can really swing 40 million and now they've committed to winning. So I guess they got to lower it again. And I guess they got to see what they can do, push more money down the road and we will see if it pays off. Uh, I'm skeptical about it, but I, I don't know. I was optimistic with Kevin O'Connell and Casey coming from the places they

did that they would have seen some of the stuff that happened in their other franchises and applied it here. So in at, at Los Angeles, Kevin O'Connell had a great season with Matt Stafford, a better quarterback than Kirk Cousins, but a quarterback that obviously has some flaws. And he would have seen how much money they poured into the roster and how much they traded away and said, you know, this was great, but this wasn't quite sustainable. This was great to be an offensive coordinator on.

Like we got to win a Super Bowl. I'm not going to be the one at fault if this goes down in a couple of years. Like I'm the offensive coordinator. This is great. We won the Super Bowl, but it's not a sustainable model. And Kweisi comes from the Browns. He just saw Baker Mayfield. He was with the 49ers. He saw Jimmy Garoppolo. In my head, maybe just taking it optimistically, I said, those guys are going to look at those situations and say, that's not a sustainable model. But what I fear they saw there is they said, that's a sustainable model for our jobs to continue to be renewed because the same regime is still in San Francisco with Jimmy Garoppolo. They've continued to push it down and they've continued to get good results, but that regime is still there. And the Kevin O'Connell saw the same thing. We're just going to keep pushing the chips in the table. And if we make it to the playoffs, it's going to be really hard for them to get rid of us. If we make it to the playoffs, they, they can just look back two years at the Vikings and say, they were ready to get rid of Spielman, but they made it to the playoffs

and that bought him more time. And so part of me has to think they didn't look and say that model for these other teams was unsustainable for winning. They looked at it and said, that's a sustainable way for us to keep our jobs, which we have to remind ourselves every time that that is the main motivation of every team is for the owners to make money and for the GM and their head coach. They just want to keep their job. And the easiest way to do that is to not tank because we've seen many times teams tank and they get the stain of the two years of bad play. And then the owners say, you know what? I know we brought you in, said we were okay with tanking, but we were just kind of bad for the last two years. Your overall record's kind of bad. I don't know if we can keep you guys. I think we're going to just hand over this rebuild now that it's fully ready. We're going to hand it over to another GM and head coach.

And so if I'm Kweisi and Kevin O'Connell, I don't quite blame them then if they're trying to keep their jobs, like they're trying to do that. But I thought that was why we got a first year head coach and a first year GM. So you didn't have a head coach and a GM so set right away and worried about their next contract or worried if they're going to stay. And that's what I feel like we got. And it came out that Kwesi only had a four-year deal, which in general is very low for GMs. And so maybe that was him saying, I'm already on a lower contract. Like I got to find a way to give me some more time. And Kirk Cousins, he found was what gave him the most time. And I guess we'll find out if that is the case, but I'm,

I'm skeptical that, you know, the one chance you may have as a GM, the one chance you may have as a head coach, you're going to go this route, but they are, and we're going to see if it works. It is odd to talk about a new GM and new coaches being under the gun right away. And I guess I felt like they wouldn't be. I thought that there would be all the freedom in the world to have a year of transition, a year of signing Marcus Mariota or whoever else, which, you know, by the way, if you do a comparison of Kirk Cousins average year over the last four years, you can find this in other quarterbacks. I covered Tyrod Taylor in 2015 in Buffalo. His QBR in 2015 was higher than anything Kirk Cousins has had here. I mean, that's just the truth. This is what I was working on earlier.

I was going to tell you about is the title to the article I was working on was, is it hard to find competent quarterback play? And I was going through the peak seasons of some of these free agents and available quarterbacks. Baker Mayfield a year ago on a rookie contract, and we know he's not that good, had a QBR of 65.5 last year in 2020, which is higher than anything Kirk has had. Mitch Trubisky's second year, the year that they brought in Matt Nagy and had that great defense, his QBR was higher than anything Kirk has had. Mitch Trubisky's second year, the year that they brought in Matt Nagy and had that great defense, his QBR was higher than anything Kirk has had. What's the correlation? It's usually that the guy's on the rookie contract or that the guy is insanely cheap. So when Tyrod Taylor did it, he made $880,000 and took up 0.4% of the bill's salary cap

the year that he had. And QBR is just uh espn stat sort of factors in game situation um and sort of uh presents to you how well your quarterback played like did he give you a chance to win the game so the basic way to put it would be if someone had a 60 qbr that means 60 of the time they gave you a chance to win the game. That's the most basic way of describing it. And cousins have been, I can actually tell you where they have ranked. And this is where it's like, Kevin O'Connell, you are going to have to have an answer for this Kirk in this stat that factors game situation, 15th, 18th, 13th, and 14th. You know, that's going to tell us more about what actually happened than a PFF stat, which doesn't take into account game situation at all. It's only the throws are being judged.

What throws did you make and were they completed? Were they accurate? Which we know that he does this. And I was thinking about Paul, just that the other teams who had a quarterback who was decent and decided that they were going to move along and draft someone else and who have benefited from it. Not everyone ever has benefited from it. So don't take me for saying that. But the Buffalo Bills are at the top of this list. They had Tyrod Taylor and there are articles from 2017 that say, Bills, you got to lock up Tyrod Taylor because he's good enough

and you should build the rest of your team around him. They picked Josh Allen. Baltimore, I mentioned Kansas City. They had Alex Smith. They picked Patrick Mahomes, who was a pretty highly criticized prospect. And people thought, well, you can't play like that in the NFL. And that worked out for them. Cincinnati got stuck in mediocrity because they didn't do this. And it took them years to get out of it. And they tanked by accident and ended up with a great quarterback. You could even say that a team like Pittsburgh has hung on for like too long with Ben Roethlisberger and continued to have a high paid quarterback who wasn't good enough and did not benefit

from it. So there have been a lot of teams. And I mentioned Baltimore as a part of this too, there have been a lot of teams who have benefited pretty greatly from it. San Francisco, you were talking about these quarterbacks who tend to fall in love with Kirk Cousins, but San Francisco said Jimmy G wasn't good enough

and he's taken them to a Super Bowl and an NFC championship. And they said, not good enough. We need somebody who's more dynamic. And that's where it really gets a little foggy for me because the whole league is talking about Malik Willis and how really the price to play poker, if you're going to find a great quarterback,

is speed, arm strength, physical tools. And you take a look around and you see Matt Stafford, who I did not ever really buy into to tell you the truth because he turned the ball over so much. But what did I say right after they won the Super Bowl? The thing that I felt like I didn't factor in enough was the peak high end of Matt Stafford is the guy has one of the great arms of the last 20 years and everything came together in the right offense for him. Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes in the 13 seconds game, firing back and forth, making crazy plays, running around all the, all these things. Like these are the quarterbacks who are winning. Joe Burrow is a playmaker goes off schedule,

throws the ball downfield, takes risks, all these things that we have not seen from cousins. And the other part of this too, that makes it, you know, just like, I don't know how you don't factor this into your decision, but the guys who have won have committed themselves as leaders of their franchises and who have just sort of captured the hearts and minds of the people in their city. And I am sorry for drawing back to Buffalo, but this is just what I know the most is when I was there is when Jim Kelly was in his peak when I was growing up and Jim Kelly still lives in Buffalo.

He just made the city his. He owned the city. He still does. If Jim Kelly speaks, everyone wants to hear it. And the man is like 55. That's not what you have here. It's not what you have here. Are you telling me?

I mean, he just tweeted. I mean, Kirk just tweeted, now that that's out of the way, let's get to work on a Lombardi. Hashtag, let's freaking go. Is that not a leader, Matt? I mean, what do you mean? I mean, that's that's his that's one of his first public statements about the team since the offseason. Is that tweet right there by by our own Kirk Cousins? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, look like this is another part of it is, you know, Mike Zimmer was really, really strong on this point that he wanted to see Kirk Cousins become a better leader. And I just would love to be at the ranch tonight with Mike Zimmer and just be

like, you just got fired for this. Didn't you? Like, I mean, I didn't you, isn't that what like Kevin O'Connell must really believe he's got the answers. He must have really presented the answers to the Wilfs and to Kweisi Adafo Mensah to be able to say, like, this is what I can do to change this. I've looked at high and low in the analytics and I wrote a piece about it, about like where there were in the spaces in the numbers to find more from Kirk Cousins. But you brought this up earlier. He has had three career years here out of four. Do you think there's another peak for Kirk Cousins? Is there a peak we haven't hit? Well, the concern that they should have is that somebody who's not particularly physically gifted might actually fall off in his thirties. I mean, this doesn't happen to Aaron Rogers or Tom Brady, who's

probably doing HGH or something. Sorry. Don't sue me, Tom Brady. It's a joke mostly. But you know, I mean, with, with cousins, this is not somebody who is Matt Stafford. Who's just like this giant behemoth of a human being. There are players who played a similar game to Cousins who lost their physical skills into their thirties. Phillip Rivers is one of them. Honestly, Drew Brees kind of did, but he was still the most accurate and the smartest and the best leader and all those things. And they built an unbelievable team for him. But that's, that's a goat though. Like that's a top five. That's somebody that you don't talk about in the same ballpark. So yeah, I mean, I, I just, uh, the things that they're sort of

overlooking to make this happen are going to require answers, but I don't know that those answers are going to be sufficient for people who have spent four years of their life thinking that this team went all in on a quarterback who could take them to the next level and has honestly come nowhere close. A divisional playoff appearance is nothing. Didn't Troy Aikman say this last year? If you lose in the first round, did you even make the playoffs? What difference does it make? Aikman's quote was, you might as well be the Jets. Over the last few years, you might as well be the J. Um, the jets actually have more wins against winning teams than the Vikings do in the last two seasons. So I, it just, you know, this, this, and this presents the challenge for us, Paul is, I mean, what do we talk about next with this? I mean, it's going to be all right. Now your moves have to prove out

this year right away that you know what you're doing or you just have different looking versions of the same thing you have a taller head coach and a taller general manager who are the same person rick spielman used analytics by the way okay i mean and he made moves that were inefficient like extending cousins the first time when the team wasn't ready to win. And do I believe that Kirk cousins could be in any situation good enough with a good enough team around him to ever in a million years, go to a Superbowl. I would say that I would not count it out entirely because the playoffs can be pretty random and things can fall in a certain way. But everything is an odds play.

It's not whether I believe something is totally possible in the universe. I'm going to go back to my experience as a juror. It's beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't mean no doubt whatsoever in the universe. Like I would say beyond a reasonable doubt that I think that this is almost an impossible task. I wouldn't say it's not possible in any world or that things couldn't go the right way or that they couldn't hit on every draft pick and be competitive. And I think what you'll be talking about is fighting for the division, maybe at best for next year. But if Justin Fields becomes good. I mean, you're talking about playing for second and third place.

If Aaron Rodgers continues to play the way he's playing and there's no real play here to win a Super Bowl. And that, I think, is the hardest thing. So why don't we just because I've taken up a ton of your time today, Paul, and I'm not sorry for that at all. But let's let's just talk about Brady coming back for a second. I mean, totally shocking, honestly, that he returned. But also he played so well last year that unless he has a Peyton Manning entire collapse, he's coming back to a great Tampa Bay team. Aaron Rodgers is coming back to a great Tampa Bay team. Aaron Rogers is coming back to a great green Bay team. And the Vikings right now,

if you're putting odds on them, I think you're talking about them as maybe the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, best team in the NFC, depending on how these things fall. You're not better than Dallas.

Yeah. Let's do that right now. Like which team? So Packers you'd say are better than them. Yeah. Tampa Bay for sure. Tampa Bay is better than them dallas is the rams dallas and the rams san francisco with trey lance i mean if they trade jimmy g but even if they don't then still san francisco a much better team yep arizona yep even despite their drama yeah i i mean anyone else in the nfc east i think they're

probably better than the Commanders, probably. Well, you know, I mean, if, look, Wentz won more games than Kirk last year. Yeah, but the fact that we just named five teams that are like five or six teams that are like, we didn't have to hesitate or better than the Vikings, like that's not a great spot to be. And I'm not sure, even though you clear up 15,

$20 million in cap space, 25, 30, even 30, like that is not enough to drastically change a roster for you to rise up above any of those teams. Could I see you better than the Cardinals? Sure. Could I see you better than the 49ers? Sure. You're still fourth, maybe. And that means you're going on the road twice in the playoffs, probably before you even get to a super bowl and we're assuming no one gets better by the way like we're assuming that they're basically the same as they are from last year and yeah we're assuming deshaun watson is not in the nfc right uh you're you're assuming a lot and uh in in that scenario you're assuming

kirk cousins continues the play that he's, which has been pretty consistent season to season, but is sporadic within those seasons. He still has games where he completely disappears. There are narratives of him not playing well in night games, not playing well in primetime games for a reason. They might be overblown, but they're there for a reason because he has repeatedly not played well. And I think maybe some of those have gone to the back burner

as you talk about the contract, but the ins and outs and the ups and downs in a season of that player can be very, very drastic. And I'm just not sure the roster right now is ready to support him when that happens. Washington last year, by the way, won seven games with Taylor Heineke starting the entire season. Taylor Heineke, who is a clear backup. And the Vikings won eight, including the final game of the season that didn't count at all. I don't know, man. I don't know. Like, that's a long way to go.

That is a long way to go. So I guess that's my final takeaway. And Justinerson better agree with this because his entire rookie contract now is with kirk cousins you're right you like the entirety of justin jefferson's the vast the immense value you're getting from justin jefferson's contract is now entirely in a kirk cousins era so he better be happy with where the franchise is in two years to sign an extension uh if you had gone with a bad court or if you drafted a quarterback, there's a chance he's not because there's a chance that the quarterback's

bad. But if Justin Jefferson still has only played in one playoff game in two years, and you're trying to offer him extension, maybe he takes it because it's life changing money, but maybe he doesn't. And that's your biggest asset. And so I would want to know some of just the most important people on your team. How do they feel about this? Cause they better be behind

it because those are the guys you need. You need to be worrying about and caring about how they think. Well, if they didn't ask, then they're doing something that, uh, the last group also did. So, uh, you know, I guess that's where we're at. So I thank you again for all your time today, Paul. I really appreciate it. And just my final thought is that the bar has changed for how we evaluate Kevin O'Connell and Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. And they will have an opportunity to prove themselves right. And they will have an opportunity to show that they are vastly different to the level that they can solve a Rubik's Cube that has not been solved by other people in the NFL, a lot of other people. And that that's not just referring to

Kirk, but the whole, you know, large quarterback contract conundrum that a lot of teams have tried and hasn't worked. And yeah, I mean, that's, that's of where we're at, is that the coming weeks will really determine whether this is something totally different in their approach that is going to take this to the next level. Or if this is sort of more of the same, only with younger voices who know how to say the word collaboration a lot. So we will find out. But I think that my final thought is more just like shocked at the no trade clause. I get everything else. I get everything else. The no trade clause. Mike McCartney, you are a legend.

And I respect you. I think Kirk's up to like $240 million in his career. And I mean, if we're going to tip our hats to one thing, it is that. Because Kirk knows how to maintain leverage. And you best believe this deal contains so much leverage. More leverage than I feel like he's ever had, frankly, with the no trade clause. And now the young GM coach pairing that basically are... We have another head coach GM pairing that are tied to Kirk Cousins.

Imagine missing the playoffs two years in a row and gaining more leverage than you've ever had against your team. What a time to be alive, Paul. Well, we'll be here and we'll have lots of reaction this week. Courtney Cronin has already texted. She wants in Sam.

We'll try to connect with him from Hawaii where he's on vacation. At some point, Mark Schofield from USA today is talking with us on Tuesday. So there will be all sorts of people weighing in on this for sure. And we'll see what everybody else has to say about it. But I guess color me skeptical for now and we'll see how it goes. So thanks again, Paul. And thank you all for following along with this story that has finally come to an end

and we have an answer. And now we can move on and start draft scouting defensive ends i guess uh we'll talk to you later paul