For NFL fans, the start of the offseason is always an exciting time of year. You get to choose which free agents to target and which draft selections to add to your team. However, the predominant feeling among Minnesota Vikings supporters at the moment is anxiety for the team.
That makes sense. With starting quarterback Kirk Cousins expected to be a free agency after recovering from an injury, the Vikings are at a crossroads. The franchise must make difficult decisions about the future of football’s most important players, including extending (or not extending) Cousins and standout pass rusher Danielle Hunter before their contracts expire, and you have anxiety.
Including the NFL’s media apparatus, it seems like there is a negotiating update every other day. Feed that through the media machine’s surrounding content machine (Zone Coverage, thanks for reading!), and the worry storm intensifies into a cyclone powered by proposed demands, trade rumours, and fictitious free-agency landing spots.
How do you tell the signal from the noise with all the rumours, conjecture, and opinions out there? It is simple to become overburdened. However, you may begin to uncover the reality of the situation if you have a solid understanding of how NFL contracts and negotiations operate.
To help us decide what has legs and what doesn’t, let’s examine a few instances from the players I mentioned above.
The nature of guarantees and Kirk Cousins
The nature of the assurances in Cousins and Jefferson’s contracts has been the subject of recent reporting. First, let’s examine Kirk.
According to a recent report by SI’s Albert Breer, the Vikings declined to extend Cousins’ contract past 2024. That appeared to be confirmed by ESPN’s Kevin Seifert, who said that Cousins wants his contract “locked in” for a number of years:
The NFL does not provide players fully guaranteed contracts, in contrast to the NBA and MLB. Non-guaranteed contracts are very much in the team’s advantage because they allow them to cut a player who isn’t performing up to par without facing any repercussions. For Cousins, the guarantee structure has been quite important. He was notably given a fully guaranteed contract by the Vikings in 2018, and ever since then, he has essentially had two extensions guaranteeing him every dollar. In comparison, consider Derek Carr. In 2022, Carr agreed to a three-year, $121.5 million contract extension with the Las Vegas Raiders; however, he only received $25 million during the first year of the agreement before being cut by the team in 2023.
As an aging player coming off of a major injury, it makes sense that Cousins would want multiple years guaranteed on a new deal. That not only provides him additional financial security, but it ensures he is in the same offense for two years. That should let him perform at his best in 2025 and set him up for his next deal at age 38.
On the Vikings side, it makes sense to try to avoid tying yourself to an aging, injured QB who has played well but hasn’t brought the team past the divisional round in his six seasons. If the team wants to get younger at the position, it would make sense to draft a rookie and have him sit behind Cousins for a year. However, it doesn’t make sense to commit to paying Cousins during that player’s second season; Minnesota’s theoretical QB of the future should be ready to start by then.
