Why Cousins' contract hurts the team.

Cousins was selected by the Washington Redskins as the seventh choice in the fourth round of the 2012 NFL Draft, making him the 102nd draft pick overall.[16] The pick surprised many analysts, as the Redskins had drafted 2011 Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III with the second overall pick to be their franchise quarterback. The Redskins acquired the Griffin III pick by giving the St. Louis Rams four high-value draft picks over three years.[17] Cousins was viewed as an insurance policy in case Griffin was injured, with Redskins coach Mike Shanahan saying "You're one or two plays away from being the starter...And if I see that value out there on the third day of the draft, I'm going to take that."[18] The Redskins drafting Griffin and Cousins in the same draft echoed the team's strategy in the 1994 NFL draft, when the team drafted Heath Shuler with the third overall pick and later drafted Gus Frerotte in the seventh round.

What I would do, assuming this is the case, is to be proactive with my cap and convert 2019 and whatever 2020 salary is allowable for those or other players to save cap space in 2019 that can be carried over to 2020. This would allow for similar levels of cap relief while maintaining 30% compliance. It would also probably be better long term for the salary cap.

The negative to this approach is that the Vikings truly are in the middle of a three year window. They signed Kirk Cousins to a fully guaranteed deal that runs from 2018-2020 and if the bottom falls out this year certainly would not want to over commit to players, even good ones, if the team looks like they will be in a position to draft a QB in 2020. Even if the bottom doesn’t fall out they may need to draft a QB. Cousins was for the most part mediocre for the Vikings last year. Is mediocre good enough? Do the Vikings want to extend “mediocre” at $33-35 million a season in 2021?

So for the purposes of maintaining flexibility I do believe that they would like to wait and see on how Cousins looks this year. The problem is that every week you wait in 2019 to convert salary to bonus is 2020 cap savings that could be lost. If you wait on Cousins’ performance then that leaves you more with with the option of extending Cousins for cap relief as his deal expires in 2021 so there is room to play with the numbers. Again though do you want to buy deeper into a mediocre QB?

Using voidable contract years with Cousins for cap relief I don’t think is a possibility for a team with salary cap issues. Void years, often used by the Saints and Eagles, let you add dummy years and prorate money into the future. For someone like Cousins, with a $31 million cap charge, you could defer well over $20 million in cap if you wanted. This would comply with the 30% rules, but the end of CBA rules complicate issues. Normally any player whose contract voids or is terminated after June 1 has the cap charge accelerate to the following year (2021 in this case). The rules for next year are different in that there is no June 1 rules change. So if the contract voids five days before the end of the league year (the day the CBA expires), which is a common date to void, all that money should accelerate back to 2020. That doesn’t work if you only have $5 million in cap space. So my assumption is the NFL will not allow teams to run with cap space lower than the void years and may just add such cap charges to the 2020 cap with adjustments if extensions are reached and the void does not occur. I guess they could void a contract after the start of the league year but that would disqualify you from a compensatory pick and the ability to tag a player.

So are the Vikings cap issues overblown? Probably, but they are somewhat more complicated than a team like the Eagles last year. I tend to think a lot of their decision making may hinge on how Cousins and the team performs this year but they would be better off probably deciding sooner rather than later as to how much they believe in Cousins. They probably, under any circumstance, will not be able to be a major player in free agency in 2020, though you can never rule out adding a player or two, and are likely locked into what they have on the team unless they can explore the trade market to bring in low salaried veterans or make a play for disgruntled rookies at the tail end of their contract (think the Rams with Fowler and Peters).