This past offseason, the Washington Redskins decided to let their starting quarterback walk in free agency. Kirk Cousins desired much more money than the Redskins were willing to give up for him. It’s understandable considering Cousins ended up getting a three-year, $84 million deal with 100% of the contract being fully guaranteed. That’s a lot of money considering what could happen injury-wise to a quarterback who’s honestly proven nothing to me as a starter. In my opinion, Kirk Cousins wasn’t worth all of that money, especially since it was the first fully guaranteed contract in NFL history.
With the Redskins, Cousins stats look like a star quarterback’s, but much like Matthew Stafford, Cousins couldn’t lead his team to a playoff victory. Cousins threw for at least 4,000 yards and 25 TDs in each of his seasons as a full-time starter.
In his career, he’s 5-24 vs teams that have a record above .500. He just can’t perform vs good teams, let alone great ones. That’s great, but the most important things for football teams are winning games, going to the playoffs, and winning there.
Cousins could only lead the Redskins to one playoff appearance in four years as a starter, and they lost that game to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers. I understand that not all of the blame goes to Cousins in that game, as he had no turnovers. However, unlike his counterpart Aaron Rodgers, Cousins didn’t do enough for his team to win the game. Cousins threw for over 300 yards but threw only one TD.
The biggest reason for me saying that the Vikings wasted money on Cousins is the fact that they had three starting-caliber QBs already on their roster. Teddy Bridgewater, Sam Bradford, and Case Keenum were all in Minnesota prior to this season.
Letting one of them go, I get. Letting two of them go, ok. However, letting all three of them go, for a quarterback who’s led his team to one playoff appearance in four years?! That makes no sense to me, especially when you already have three quarterbacks on the roster who could start in the NFL right now. There were so many more improvements the Vikings could’ve made with that money. They could’ve upgraded their o-line, who’ve given up over 45 sacks this year, or even upgraded their already stellar defense.
The Vikings had a system that worked and QBs who performed in that system. Instead, they decided to go out and get a quarterback who has no experience in their system. The team had made it to the NFC championship with a 13-3 record. There’s no reason to try to change such an integral part of your team for someone like Kirk Cousins for such a large sum of money.