A World Without Cousins-Should have drafted Love

It's actually not hypothetical at all

Which team gave us the best chance to win the Superbowl? The team led by Case or the 2 teams led by Kirk?

Simple and straightforward question. Not hypothetical.

Here is another problem. We are paying him a ton of $ using a lot of cap space on him and 2 wr ‘s, but Zimmer wants to run the ball more than pass. I have no problem with using your best weapon (cook) and running the ball a lot and trying to play great defense. But when you are paying your qb a ton of $ and 2 wr’s who all 3 eat into the cap significantly, then you are doing the square peg into a round hole thing. If that is the team we are trying to incorporate, then a cheaper qb and only 1 highly paid wr is needed and you allocate the savings into trying to fix the oline and dline and draft the sh!t out of defensive players and an olineman or 2.

Cook is NOT our best weapon

Don't worry Iowans, I am talking about Kirk. Your love lives are safe.





Cousins isn’t going to be traded. He has a no trade clause and has very little value to any team that he would be willing to be traded too. So, while a bad Miami team with a ton of cap might be willing to give up a 2nd for him, Cousins would refuse to go to that terrible team.



However, as we consider extending Cousins, I think it is important to consider what this team would look like without Cousins massive cap hit and Cousins himself, and see if this team would be better or worse. If it is worse, extending him makes sense. If it is better without Cousins this year, I don’t know why we would extend this cap hell into 2021 and beyond.



So here is my offseason plan based on a hypothetical Cousins for 7th rounder trade:



Cuts/cap savings:

Rhodes/8.1

Joseph/10.5

Reiff/9



Total Cap Available: 60 million



Restructures/Cap Savings(Note: These are restructures that convert salary to signing bonus. It does not affect how much these players are paid each year and they do not even need to give consent to the restructure. It only gives us more cap space):

Barr/5

Kendricks/5

Hunter/5



Total cap available: 75 Million



Viking Major Free Agents signed/Cost in 2020/Total Contract/Length of contract

Mac/7/35/4

Bailey/3/12/4

Harris/9/48/4

Ham/2/8/3

Colquit/1/3/2

Extend Cook 5/35/3

Griffen/10/50/4



Total Cap Available: 48 million



Free Agent Signings/Cost in 2020/Total Contract/Length of contract:

DJ Reader 10/60/5

Suh/5/5/1

Byron Jones 12/70/5

Conklin/6/40/5

Glasgow/6/40/5

Keenum/4/8/2

Total Cap Available: 5 Million



Our starting lineup now looks like this:

Offense:



LT: ONeil

LG: Glasgow

C: Bradbury

RG: Kline

RT: Conklin



QB1: Case Keenum/Jordan Love



RB: Cook



WR1: Diggs

WR2: Theilen



TE: Rudy



FB: Ham



Defense (nickle):



RDE: Griffen

NT: Reader

3Tech: Suh

LDE: Hunter



OLB: Barr

MLB: Kendricks



CB1: Jones

CB2: Hughes/Hill

CB3: Mack



SS: Smith

FS: Harris



K: Bailey

P: Colquit



I am not much of a mock drafter, so I won’t get too much into the draft, but honestly, all we need is some depth at this point. The one thing you probably noticed above is I have the Vikings taking Love as the QBOTF. That probably means we don’t have a 1st next year as we used it to trade up, but that is worth it to get your franchise guy.



You will also notice that I am pushing a lot of cap down the road. Lots of smaller salaries in year 2020 at the expense of larger ones in 2021, 2022, etc. Normally that isn’t a good plan, but with a QB on a rookie contract, the Vikings can afford to do that. If Cousins is extended, that isn’t possible.



So what do you all think? No holes anywhere in that starting lineup and at least on paper that looks like one of the best rosters I have seen the Vikings put together in my lifetime. Is the downgrade from Cousins to Case worth getting that much better everywhere else?

I can almost guarantee we are going to do that anyway this season. The big difference here, is that we don't have to worry about paying a QB 40 million next season and can easily afford to move that cap and have a lot left over in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Also, it does not matter which player you convert salary to signing bonus on.  Barr, Diggs, Hunter, Kendricks, it doesn't matter.  All you are doing is creating cap this year at the expense of later years.  Moving cap space from one bucket to the other.   Something we can afford if we have a rookie starting QB.