The 2004 Pistons and the Vikings Offense...

What is wrong with expecting greatness out of a player who is being paid like he is Brady, Wilson, or Brees?


Because that's it. What other young stars do we have for cheap? Darrisaw has got to prove he can stay healthy and Osborn is a 3rd WR. On defense, there's nobody. Our underwhelming draft classes have led us here - the core of money that we're spending on team is mostly consisted of players past their prime (Thielen, Cook, Kendricks, Smith, possibly Cousins).



All this talk of about how we need to focus on the team and how Kirk's pay is of no consequence... so let's examine our offensive FA signings since Kirk.

Signings over $2M a year:

2019
G Kline 3/15.5

2020
None

2021
None

2022
So far, none


It's almost as if we need to open up cap space... hmmm, maybe let's examine the roster for inefficiencies based upon what we are expecting for each player. Oh hey, we're paying Kirk to be a top 5-7 QB and he's not close to that. But nah, we're so scared of potentially not having a QB that we have to give him whatever he wants. Time to go 8-9 again, boys!


Then why not extend him out 3/4 years and potentially take advantage of him being cheaper than the market rate in 2024 and 2025? By doing these tiny extensions, the Vikings are screwing themselves out of more and more cap space. How are we going to fix the defense and add more help for Cousins on the offense if we can't afford anybody?

All somewhat valid points and i dont know how to multi quote so ill just number your concerns.

1. because we have to be reasonable and realistic. 

2. ok fair but Kirk dont make the draft picks and really we havent had huge needs to draft skill guys because weve had good guys and it just hasnt been a need when Diggs wanted out it was and we nailed it. 

3. we spent the money erroneously on defense becuase we deemed our offense good enough. We also dont know which lineman that we targeted took similar deals to play on other teams or choose to live in different areas. Im sure we could of had a C or RG for the cost of Pierce, Tomlinson, Peterson, Richardson etc... We probably wanted to give Bradbury another year since we invested a 1 in him and we dont know if they didnt try to sign a guard and figured it was better value to spend that money on other players. Again not on Kirk and not related. We spend money just erroneously... Whats done is done we are talking about right now and next year and my opinion is we got fair value. 

4. Age concerns at that point... And maybe this regime gets cut loose after 2 years if things dont pan out...  

Let's pay 40+ million for a game manager. Okay.


Jesus, do you people even listen to yourselves? Wow.

Kirk Cousins alone isn't why we are extremely unlikely to win a superbowl but given his salary he does play a part (which is why you can't ignore it). As was noted we already have been pushing salary cap back which means we are tight against the cap already. We have a team that hasn't made the playoffs the last two years let alone a SB. Now we have to either push more back creating this issue again in future years or make cuts from the non playoff team we have in order to fill out the roster. We have a lot of needs and almost no cap right now to fill them and we have a long way to go to be a SB team when we aren't even a playoff team recently.

Adding Jefferson and Darrisaw with rookie deals to any individual and their contract will make it look good lol. There is a reason you added them instead of focusing just on Cousins and his salary hits we keep taking.

I wouldn't want to pay any of them close to this amount either, that isn't a good reason just because some others are overpaying guys too. Watson is better than Cousins, I don't know how this group feels but he seemingly has the talent that might actually justify something like what we are giving Cousins. The issue is Cousins is more like the 13th best QB in the league than someone in the 5-10 range. Again a 2 year last hurrah is just a meaningless waste of time if we aren't a true contender and the last 4 years should give us plenty of idea if that core is or not.

That you are talking about the GM/Coach we just hired as having their back against the wall now and if it doesn't work we should point the finger at them is kind of getting at the problem in itself. The reason their backs are against the wall is they are making what appears to be bad/the same old that got the last regime fired. Due to just their early decision to extend Cousins they have now given up the excitement people had for a "must win or else" approach at a time when we don't have that roster and already have failed back to back years doing this same thing.

All the guys above Cousins in yearly salary are better than him unquestioned, with the exception of maybe Dak... but not by like 17% which is how much more he makes... Russell Wilson makes the same and thats the best contract out of all of them. and all the other guys immediately following him Cousins is better than.  Wents, Goff, Ryans, Tannehill or whoever else I stated above. 

Yeah under our circumstances it's actually perfect. I'm completely fine at the price and the time...

I just always believed we should have accomplished more with this core and now we have two years to see if I'm right... Come 2024 Dalvin Cook, Adam Thielen, Kirk Cousins, Eric Kendricks, Harrison Smith, Anthony Barr, etc will all need to be replaced. This is essentially that cores last dance and I'd say that's fairly obvious to everybody.

I think there's more juice to squeeze out of this lemon....

Kirk Cousins can't call time outs, lines up over the guard, throws away passes on both fourth and goal and two point conversion plays, throws hail Mary passes ten yard out of bounds, is the king of three and outs, never sees a checkdown he doesn't like, and was the 34th fastest quarterback getting the ball out in a 32 team league a few years ago. He is a game manager that has trouble managing the game.