Vikings trade for Kirk Cousins, what does it mean for the season? | Vikings Now Podcast

Never thought we would do it, but here it is, an emergency, an emergency Vikings Now podcast. Usually we do it after games, but we were so depressed last night we didn't even want to talk about it, but now here we are. We're all back. We're all positive because one Kurt Cousins is back in purple. Jim Rich here with Ahmad Hicks and Pierre Newsom, and gentlemen, are you happy now? Yes, because you had a championship defense that you were just going to let, oh, oh, the price would have been too high. Oh, you know, we got to think about our future. No, the future is now. Take your swing. Go for it. If you win a title. I don't care if they stink for five years. It doesn't matter. Look at it. We cling to the 87 and 91 twins here. How many times have you guys heard about it? Neither of you are from here, but you hear us. That's all the time we're talking about. Oh, Ken Herbeck, Gary Gaetti, and all the white sweatshirts that we had that said world champions are now faded yellow like old newspapers. You forgot about Kirby Puckett? You didn't even say Kirby Puckett. We'll see you tomorrow night. That's right. So, I want to hear. So, Kirk, we'll see you on Sunday afternoon. Yeah, we will. I want to hear your thoughts about. You want me to go first? What they gave up, yeah. Well, I have no issue in terms of the compensation that they gave up. I have no issue with it because they had two third-round picks to begin with. They get that other third-round pick in the trade for Jonathan Goff to Philadelphia. So, you're essentially giving one third-round pick up. When you already have another one, I have absolutely no issue with the compensation. I'm surprised it was that. Actually, Chief, I thought you had to end up giving up more than that. I think the only reason why... Especially when they knew they had you over a barrel. Not that Kirk is worth more than a third, but... They had the Vikings over a barrel, but they couldn't drive any type of competition for Kirk Cousins. So, I mean, there was no outside bidder driving the price up, but I have no issue with a third-round pick being dealt away for Kirk Cousins. But here's the reality. The Vikings' offense this season has been like walking through the desert. When you start, you're thinking to yourself, oh, this is not so bad. It's not so bad. I can get through it. The heat's not too bad. And then after a while, you start to get a little disoriented. And then after another little while, you're thinking to yourself, I'm so desperate for thirst. I will drink just about anything, including maybe even motor oil, to satisfy my quench. Here you are, and the result of that is Kirk Cousins. That's the result of you being so dehydrated and disoriented that you were desperate for anything. Anything. That's how bad the quarterback play was here in Minnesota that you circle back to Kirk Cousins. Now that's not to say that Kirk Cousins won't elevate this room because he is absolutely an upgrade over everything Minnesota has. I'm not sure if Minnesota, as we're taping this right now, I don't have any information as to where, where else Minnesota kind of poked around. I know Justin Herbert was the popular name, but I think we have to be realistic. And even though Although LA is winless on the year. Why would the Chargers give up a franchise quarterback just because the season is going poorly? I mean, if L.A. wants to start the whole thing all over again, go ahead. By all means, it's your prerogative. But I never bought into the notion that the Chargers were ever going to give up on Justin Herbert. So you look around the landscape of the league, this seemed to make the most sense because Kirk Cousins can step into practice tomorrow and make it seem like he never left. So I agree. I fully expect to see Kirk Cousins start on Sunday. He knows the offense like the back of his hand, and we know that Justin Jefferson is grinning from ear to ear. Yeah, honestly, he is. I was a little bit surprised after last night that when I saw a report that said the Vikings have just now begun to make calls about the quarterbacks, I thought they would have been waking GMs up at midnight last night after the game they had. Like, it was that bad. We all knew a trade was going to happen. How I characterize this situation with Kirk Cousins, it's like, You're a guy and you have your significant other. And somebody that you've just been with, you're like, all right, I like him. I like him a lot. But I think I can do better. And then they go out, they go have some success. And then you're that guy, you're like, you know what? I can't do better. So now I'm begging. So now they're back in a relationship. So that's how I look at that as the Vikings, because it's still just another temporary relationship. This is not a marriage long-term. This is a temporary relationship. He's 38 years old. But like you said, they identified the weakness of this team. And Justin Jefferson said it perfectly last night. He said, we come here in front of these cameras, and we say the same thing week after week. Special teams is doing great. Miles is making nice returns. Will is making all his kicks. The defense is playing great. We are the ones constantly dragging this team down. I think they heard their superstar and said, you know what? He's right. Like, we got to go get some help. So I look at it as, is he the young, elusive Kirk Cousins? I'm going to go out here and extend plays? No. But he is the Kirk Cousins that can go through a progression, get the ball out of his hands. And honestly, outside of... Him and Sam Darnold, every quarterback has struggled in this Kevin O'Connell offense. So, like Pierre said, it made the most sense when you looked at Daniel Jones, Geno Smith, and Justin Herbert. None of those teams are willing to part ways with their quarterback. So, Kirk Cousins was the match made in heaven because Fernando Mendoza needed a snap. Can I say one thing to Ahmad's ex-girlfriend analogy? It's funny that he brings that up because when you get back with your ex-girlfriend, For a little while, you're like, oh, this is great. It's nice to be back in familiar company. This is good. And then after a while, slowly, the things that made you break up in the first place start to rear their ugly head. Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily what's going to happen here, but usually given, I'll just speak for myself, given my history, you figure out that you broke up for a reason. And a lot of times when you get back together with these people, it still doesn't work out in the end. Once in a while, it may, and it might this season, like you said. I mean, again, this is... It's all we're getting is to the end of the year. Yes, this is... Whatever happens after that, whatever. There's no question this is an upgrade of the position. There is no question that this is going to make this offense better. Is it enough to possibly get them to the NFC Championship game? To be determined. Um, but, but that's just, that this is my thoughts in terms of interpersonal relationships and how they can go throughout the course of time. I think it all boils down to Kirk Cousins though, because you have a defense and I think everybody in the NFL recognizes the Vikings have the best defense in the NFL. They showed it the last two weeks. What they've done to Jared Goff and that Lions offense, and then to build. The Bills and Josh Allen kept them in check for about 50 minutes of that game until their defense was just gassed. They're on the field for over 40 minutes. 45 minutes last night, so it's kind of crazy. So I look at it, it's like. If you can just get above average quarterback play from Kirk Cousins, that gives you a chance. But in the playoffs, he has to be elite. You can be above average in the regular season, but in the playoffs, teams are going to score against this defense. They're going to put up points. You have to be elite in your decision making and your playmaking. So we know we will get a good enough Kirk in the regular season, but what will we get in the playoffs? And he's winless here in the playoffs. So that's something we all have to remember. I know every Vikings fan right now, though, is elated and through the roof like, oh, my God, we finally got a quarterback. Let's remember what this quarterback did a couple years ago in the playoffs. You have to remember, they just watched that game last night. Agreed. So, of course, they're going to be elated. I mean, but they were just... You're ready to drink motor oil. You're ready to drink motor oil. They were begging for Carson Wentz. Sometimes you get what you ask for. You were begging for Carson Wentz. You got him last night, and everybody's like, oh, my God, where's Kyler? When is he coming back? Like, we'll go get somebody else. So, it's like, be careful what you ask for. Right, but we wanted to see this. That's all I was saying. He said, let's see what Wentz can do. Instead of just going back and doing the same thing week after week after week and the offense doesn't get any better. There's no unity to it, right? They're not on the same page. So you had to try something different. Just like last night, when Wentz threw back-to-back interceptions, get him out of there. I mean, Nolan Ryan, if he walks four straight batters, sure, he's a Hall of Famer, but he doesn't have it now. Make a move. And you had a chance to win that game last night, Who knows what Max would have done? And granted, it was garbage stuff. And I'm not saying Max is the answer. Don't. All I'm saying is you've got to try anything. Go to the Wildcat. Put Flores' defense out there. Let's do something different. I mean, you can't just sit there because what's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I will say I have never heard the amount of boos that I did last night. I don't know what it sounded like on the broadcast for you guys at home, but the amount of boos we heard inside U.S. Bank Stadium, and they specifically had a shot where they zoomed in on Kevin O'Connell making a play call late in the fourth quarter and just the boom. It was like, my God, these fans are upset. Oh, I tell you what, this better work for him because the ice under him is starting to melt and getting thinner. And if they did not make a trade and this offense continued to flounder. I don't know how much longer he would be around here. Yeah, no, and this is the other part of this story now because there's no one else left to fire at this point. You already did away with Quayce Dofa Menza, and let's not forget that Nolan Teasley did not sign with this franchise until late May. Nolan Teasley didn't pick Kevin O'Connell to be his head coach. Nolan Teasley didn't pick Kyler Murray to be his quarterback. When you have a new GM in place in the NFL, they want to pick their head coach and they want to pick their quarterback or at least have a hand in picking their quarterback. This is an arranged marriage right now. And that's not to say that those two don't have respect for each other or can't work together. Do you want to do a relationship podcast? I think you should start with the ex gal and you just circle back and you're over here right now. I try to be multifaceted in my career. Put that on another website. You guys can do that. But like I said, Nolan Teasley, even though he's been instructed to work alongside Kevin O'Connell. He has no real loyalty to Kevin O'Connell. Let's be honest about it. But if this gets the Vikings to perhaps, I mean, for me, if I'm being totally honest, for me, the bar is not just one playoff win. If you go, if you finish the season, if you're a wildcard team, you win your wildcard game, you go on the divisional round, you lose the divisional round. I'm sorry. That's not enough to convince me that a change doesn't have, that a change shouldn't be made. And I'm talking about this like I'm not a believer in Kevin O'Connell. I am. I actually think the guy's a great coach. And I think if he's fired tomorrow, I think there's going to be 31 other teams lining up to either hire him as their head coach or, at minimum, their offensive coordinator. So it's just you don't get five years at the NFL level and only have, at best, one playoff win to your name. And survive that. It just doesn't really happen in the NFL. So, yeah, I think there's another part of this. And as we get to the offseason, Kirk Cousins got a $10 million roster bonus. He's due in March. He's probably not going to be on the roster to see that bonus. And if they want to keep Kirk Cousins around, they're going to have to talk about restructuring his contract. Yeah, I mean, I'm honestly with Pierre on that. When you look at Nolan Teasley, he was brought up. One, I never understood the whole. We're going to hire a GM after the draft, after we've signed some of our biggest free agents. It's like you're not allowing him to put his stamp on anything. So you draft a guy in the first round who was a healthy and active last night. And another guy that was an undrafted free agent in Elijah Williams, a pickup last year who made the practice squad. He was the one elevated over your first round draft pick. Your guy you got in the fourth round, Dominique Orange, was starting over your first round draft pick. So that's not an indictment on Caleb Banks or where he is right now in his career. But I also think it's like Nolan Teasley. You haven't allowed me to put my footprint and my thumbprint on this team. Now is my time to do so. But he's like, Kevin O'Connell, this is your runway this season. But I will say this. When I went back and I watched the All-22 version this morning at 7 a.m., and I was, there are so many throws that Carson Wentz missed. And it's just like, second and eight. Misses a seven-yard completion, third and fourth, misses a three-yard check down. It's like so many opportunities in the first three drives alone to keep that offense on the field. So last night, I won't lie, I was like, it has to be Kevin O'Connell. It's the play caller. The scheme's too difficult. He's not putting his guys in position to win. And then you go back and you watch the All-22 and you see how many guys were open all the time and how many throws that were missing. You're like... Well, dang, maybe it's not Kevin O'Connell. Maybe it is just the quarterback's inability to read through a defense. Well, you also heard Justin Jefferson after the game last night talking about needing to simplify the offense. He said, maybe we just need to simplify the offense. And Kevin O'Connell said after the game, man, his pressure, they tried to simplify the offense this week. They tried to take things off their... Carson Wentz's play and just say, hey, this will be easy. Get the ball to just this way, and it did not work. There was one point in the game last night, I think it was in the third quarter, right after Buffalo went up 13-6, and they went to Jordan Mason about two or three times, and Jordan Mason ran very well. They got him up past midfield, and then after running Jordan Mason two or three times, all of a sudden they want to fake the handoff and throw it over the middle. It's intercepted, and I thought to myself, why? Well, hi. Yeah. Why? He was asked about that after the game, and he said we should have ran the ball more. Yeah, no bleeping curse word, you should have ran more. Yeah, he said that, and he said that what I found interesting last night, he said we were trying to get Carson in a rhythm, but we were trying to establish our run game. He said, so we're going run, run, pass. He said, but when you go run, run, pass, you're putting your quarterback in a position to try and find his rhythm on the most crucial down, third down. The Vikings were, what, 0 for 8 last night on third downs? Something like that. So if you go run, run, all right, well, we got six yards. It's third or fourth. We need to go pick up a pass play. Now he has no rhythm. Now he's seeing defenses he hasn't seen. So he did say last night that they should have ran more, but they did try and simplify things. And, you know, Justin Jefferson was asked, you know, he said, how do you keep – Don Mitchell asked him this. How do you keep the offense cohesiveness together without letting the weight and the pressure of everything fall down on you guys? And he said, I don't know. That's a good question. He was like, we got to figure it out. I know. This team – You know, we know the fan base is riled up. We can see it in the comments, but had this team not made a change, how much longer would there have been unity in that locker room with the defense being the best in the NFL and the offense, those guys sitting right across from you, the worst. After last night, you would have gotten the Packer game this Sunday at most, and then it probably would have all fallen apart, especially if you lose to Green Bay. The only people who were optimistic in their locker room last night were the defensive backs. They were the ones like, we'll get it turned around. We'll get this turned around. It's solvable. I knew the mood of the Vikings when we walked into the locker room. Justin Jefferson was sitting in his locker with his football pants still on. Jordan Addison was sitting in his locker with his pads still on. DeMond Clayborn right next to them. Miles Price. All your offensive guys, the ones that contribute a lot, except for Clayborn, just sitting right there, just in their phones like this. They look so dejected when we walked in last night. It took them all forever to talk to the media. Jefferson didn't talk until maybe like 45, 50 minutes after the game, which is not abnormal, but on a good game, he's a little bit quicker to get to the press. And I think he thought about like last week when he didn't talk and how much that put the light on him. So he's like, all right. But I think that delivered the message he wanted to send without having to say anything. I think that let management know we can't keep doing this if we want to keep him around. Can we stroll down memory lane for a quick moment? At the end of the 2023 season. The Vikings had an opportunity to bring back Kirk Cousins. He was lowballed. They gave him an offer to the point where they knew he wouldn't take it because they wanted to turn the page. He earned the right to explore free agency is the line that they used. I can't wait for Fox 9 to tell me that one day, too. But, you know, it's a situation where... You lowball Kirk Cousins. You know he's not going to take the offer. You let him walk in free agency. You turn the page. But would you have paid him $50 million? I was in the boat that said no. Probably not. Especially with the Achilles and all of that. You're coming off an Achilles, and to Ahmad's point earlier when he was on All Day, I think he made a great point saying you had other areas of the football team you needed to address with that money, and you weren't so eager to re-sign a 36-year-old quarterback coming off the Achilles. So I don't fault them for that. But you go from that to J.J. McCarthy. J.J. McCarthy gets hurt. You bring in Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold has a heck of a season. You lowball him, too. You let him walk in free agency. You bring in Daniel Jones midway through that season. You let him walk in free agency, all because you were committed to J.J. McCarthy. J.J. McCarthy had a, let's say, so-so year in 2025. And then you bring in Kyler Murray to compete with J.J. McCarthy for the starting quarterback job. J.J. McCarthy loses that job. Not only does he lose the competition for QB1, he loses the competition for QB2. And after what I saw from Carson Wentz last night, I thought to myself, how in the world did J.J. McCarthy lose the competition to Carson Wentz for QB2? So you trade J.J. McCarthy for a fifth-round pick, and now you trade your own third-round pick, which, again, I'll reiterate, I don't have a problem with the compensation, but you trade your own third-round pick to bring Kirk Cousins back. What a world we are living in today. Talk about the, I mean, the real winners here, the Las Vegas Raiders. I mean, they paid him what? Signed him to a $650,000 or $695,000 contract. Yeah, Atlanta's paying him all the millions of dollars, so they got him for under $700,000. But then. The Vikings now have to pay him the remainder of that contract, and they get a third-round pick for him. So you've got a quarterback that got you above-average play, got you four or five wins, and you only had to pay $300,000 for him. Leading in touchdowns. Yeah, that's crazy. Leading the league in touchdown passes. That's how you work if you're a GM. Look, that's that Tom Brady effect over there now in Las Vegas. But, look, we're here now. So what's the ceiling? I expect Kirk Cousins to play this weekend versus Green Bay. Have to. Knows the offense. Justin Jefferson's frustrated. You can't have another performance like you did last week. Can't trust Carson Wentz to go back out there. Max Brosnan is not the answer. Kyler Murray's not healthy. Kirk Cousins has to play this weekend. Absolutely. All right, we'll see how it all turns out. Watch the game on Fox. Can I say one more thing to the game, just real quick, on Sunday? Just to point out. Why? Like I'm always saying, Kirk Cousins is no spring chicken. I think now more than ever, this Vikings offensive line has to play its best football because Kirk Cousins cannot elude pressure the same way Kyler Murray can. So this offensive line is going to have all the pressure on them to make sure that Kirk Cousins stays upright, give him time in the pocket. The offensive line, I think, has been fine. I don't think it's been great, but I think it's been fine. Like last night, Carson Wentz had time to throw. Carson Wentz had time to throw. So if they give that similar time to Kirk Cousins. I think this Vikings offense is going to look a lot better. That's why even though, you know, Kirk Cousins, there's mixed feelings about him from the fan base. It doesn't matter how you feel about Kirk Cousins now. To me, all eyes is going to be on this Minnesota offensive line because if they play poorly, this offense is going to continue to stink up the joint. That's a great point. Plain and simple. That's a great point. All right, we'll end it on that. That's your emergency Vikings Now podcast. See what happens in Green Bay. Later.