• It is a little ridiculous to think Kirk Cousins just fell into the money he’s made. But I know that sentiment is out there, so I figured, in the wake of the ex-Viking procuring a four-year, $180 million deal in Atlanta, this would be a good time to kill that narrative.
Cousins’s earning power isn’t a result of luck. Rather, it’s the result of him betting on himself.
In 2015, when Cousins first became Washington’s starter, the team offered him a middling deal to stick around long-term. Cousins turned it down, then turned down a similar offer after the team franchised him in March of ’16. So he played on the $19.953 million tender, and another tag at 120% of that ($23.951 million) in ’17, when the team again fell short of what the franchise tenders dictated he make in guaranteed money.
Gutsy moves by Cousins, who incurred 32 games of injury risk (and really 48, if you count 2015), and the risk that his play would go the wrong way. In doing the deals, Cousins pushed things to a point where the tag, at 144% of the 2017 number, wasn’t palatable anymore for the team, which allowed for him to enter the market, and have the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings bid on him.
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From there, the three-year, $84 million fully guaranteed deal by Minnesota, because of its structure and length, set the stage for another three-year deal essentially fully guaranteed, the second of which had a big back end cap number that, again, took the tag off the table as an option for the Vikings as they headed into this offseason.
Anyway, that’s a lot of financial jargon for you. Just know this—Cousins getting here didn’t come without risk. He should be applauded for taking it.
