The 2018 Kirk Cousins Megathread

[gopherwrestler]

 

[since72]

Interesting tidbit.  Cousins is on pace to have the second highest total passing yards for a season for a Vikings QB.  He's in tenth place now with 3 games left. 

[Dolmonite26]

10 minutes ago, gopherwrestler said:

 

This says so much about the NFL's cap system, very broken imo

[Cearbhall]

2 hours ago, gopherwrestler said:

 

Very strong argument supporting the case that the Vikings shouldn't have given Cousins the contract they gave him. The structure, three years fully guaranteed, is also an argument against giving him the contract they gave him.  There are also some decent rebuttals but unless our fourth offensive coordinator in the last two seasons -- or one of the however many offensive coordinators we will have in the next two seasons -- is able to get more out of Cousins it will go down as a pretty bad deal for the Vikings.

Not as bad as the Sam Bradford blunder, but pretty bad.

For the record, the Cousins deal is not the move that I would have made but I also didn't hate the deal. It was a bold move. I liked that. It might not work out but that is a risk that one has to accept that goes along with most any bold move. It is better to have tried and failed than to have not tried at all. I am still hopeful that the team will be able to find value in the Cousins deal.

Edited December 12, 2018 by Cearbhall

[MacReady]

6 hours ago, vikesfan89 said:

What if the Vikings sneak into the playoffs and accidently win the super bowl?

Then next year will be that much easier since you'll be picking 32nd overall.  Like I said, I wouldn't mind all that much.  As long as the Packers have more, my team is still winning.  I actually rooted for you guys in the Championship round last year since I thought you had a better shot at beating the Patriots.  

[Dolmonite26]

22 minutes ago, Cearbhall said:

It was a bold move. I liked that. It might not work out but that is a risk that one has to accept that goes along with most any bold move. It is better to have tried and failed than to have not tried at all. I am still hopeful that the team will be able to find value in the Cousins deal.

If you ask me the move wasn't bold at all.

They were forced into a position of needing to make a move for a QB with a championship roster (which it still very much is btw) and they choose the safe route. They went with the guy who was the consensus best option, little in the way of injury history and seemed least likely to rock the boat.  He wasn't gonna move the needle and that was alright with them because #elitedefence right?

A real risk would have been betting on Teddy, but they were too afraid to risk the future on his knee. Which I don't blame them for, there is still too little evidence of what Teddy actually is as a QB, post injury or otherwise. But committing your championship window to a barely above mediocre QB was no better.

[TENINCH]

1 hour ago, Dolmonite26 said:

There are 15-20 other fine QBs in that league, we just decided to throw a record contact at one of them.

Hes had about 4-6 "off games" btw, I'm starting to think that's just who he is.

Give him an offensive line and a coordinator that knows what he is doing. Too many people willing to throw the guy under a bus. I don't care how much we're paying him. If the Vikings front office says they are fine and can resign our players I've got no complaints.

Edited December 12, 2018 by TENINCH

[Dolmonite26]

52 minutes ago, TENINCH said:

Give him an offensive line and a coordinator that knows what he is doing. Too many people willing to throw the guy under a bus. I don't care how much we're paying him. If the Vikings front office says they are fine and can resign our players I've got no complaints.

QBs who need the whole enchilada aren't worth the money he's being paid. I'm not throwing him under the bus, it's not his fault the league doesn't know how to value his position

[SemperFeist]

If you have Twitter, I suggest reading Monson’s entire thread (there’s about 5 more posts). He nails it. 

[HitStickAllDay]

Does anyone have any insight into why Cousins doesn’t seem to make checks at the line? I am re-watching the game, yikes, and in one of the first plays, a left off tackle run to Dalvin the Seahawks literally shift the DL to the right and we still just try to steamroll into the shift. Kind of weird. 

[SemperFeist]

6 hours ago, HitStickAllDay said:

Does anyone have any insight into why Cousins doesn’t seem to make checks at the line? I am re-watching the game, yikes, and in one of the first plays, a left off tackle run to Dalvin the Seahawks literally shift the DL to the right and we still just try to steamroll into the shift. Kind of weird. 

Not to beat a dead horse, but that’s usually something from the OC (we didn’t see it from the QB when Turner was here, either). We saw Cousins do it a lot in Washington, and pre-snap reads were supposed to be one of his strengths. Maybe JDF didn’t give alternate plays, maybe it’s a lack of trust in the o-line to change their assignment, maybe it’s just that it was the first year in JDF’s offense, etc. 

[swede700]

12 hours ago, Dolmonite26 said:

This says so much about the NFL's cap system, very broken imo

That really says nothing about the cap system.  In fact, if it means anything about the cap, it actually shows that Kirk Cousins is underpaid...on average, the Vikings run about 64-65 offensive plays per game, which is about 1,024 over the full season. Since he's the only player that touches the ball on every play (except for the special team plays), if you do the math, he should actually get around 17% of the cap money...he only gets 15%.  

Personally, I believe that's a ridiculous comparison to make, but it really means then that almost every QB is actually underpaid, except for Aaron Rodgers, who rightfully gets about 18.9% of Green Bay's cap money, as he means more to that team than Cousins does to the Vikings.  

[Cearbhall]

5 minutes ago, swede700 said:

That really says nothing about the cap system.  In fact, if it means anything about the cap, it actually shows that Kirk Cousins is underpaid...on average, the Vikings run about 64-65 offensive plays per game, which is about 1,024 over the full season. Since he's the only player that touches the ball on every play (except for the special team plays), if you do the math, he should actually get around 17% of the cap money...he only gets 15%.  

Personally, I believe that's a ridiculous comparison to make, but it really means then that almost every QB is actually underpaid, except for Aaron Rodgers, who rightfully gets about 18.9% of Green Bay's cap money, as he means more to that team than Cousins does to the Vikings.  

You do realize that more than one guy touches the ball on most snaps, right? If you divvy out cap space based on percentage of plays a guy touched the ball you would quickly be paying out over 100% of the cap.

And that doesn't even take into account that the defense gets about half the cap space, the special teams players get some, and there are several players on offense that are important to plays where they do not touch the ball. Calculating expected cap expense based on touches would leave you with no money for the offensive line when IMO it is the single position group that should have the most money allocated.

I don't think using amount to touches as a basis for how much a position should be paid is a sound way of making those decisions.

[swede700]

I said it was ridiculous (and I knew that someone would bring up the defensive aspect of the play), but all I'm saying is that the amount of money a QB gets says nothing about the cap system.  A QB being paid 7.5 times the average percentage of the cap per player (~2%) isn't all that bad, considering they probably have more impact on the game (especially under the current rules) than any other player on the field.  And really, in the end, you bring up the point of the offensive line...they actually spend just as much money of the cap on the offensive line as they do the QB...it's just split amongst more players.  They should probably spend more, but they actually spend more of the cap on their defense (especially the secondary and defensive line) than they do on the QB.  Maybe we should be questioning that more than questioning how much is being spent on Cousins.  

[wcblack34]

Let's list the number of teams who have won a Super Bowl while paying their QB 15% of their salary cap. Ready? Here we go:

 

 

 

That's the list. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.