Vikings Considered 2025 Dark Horse for You Know Who
The Kirk Cousins experiment flopped in Atlanta, as rookie passer Michael Penix Jr. took over the QB1 gig last weekend.
Vikings Considered 2025 Dark Horse for You Know Who
Cousins earned mucho dinero for 14 games as a Falcon — $100 million guaranteed — but his career has taken a sharp downturn in the last month.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter tweeted on December 21st, “Kirk Cousins’ divorce from the Falcons is expected to be finalized before his $10 million roster bonus is due March 17, with executives across the league fully expecting Atlanta to have to release him by then.”
And guess what? Cousins will need a new team in 2025, assuming he doesn’t take his $100 million and retire — and some Vikings fans and NFL analysts claim an affordable reunion in Minnesota is possible.
Yahoo Sports‘ Jori Epstein sized up Cousins’ 2025 market this week, and the Vikings made the cut as a possible landing spot. “Sources pointed to the Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans, New York Jets and New York Giants as possible places where Cousins could start immediately in 2025. Dark-horse candidates include the San Francisco 49ers, where Cousins could reunite with head coach Kyle Shanahan 12 years after their two seasons of overlap in Washington, and the Minnesota Vikings,” Epstein wrote.
Some Vikings fans would be wildly unenthused about a Cousins reunion because it would symbolize backward thinking.
“The 49ers are expected to (and should) roll with Brock Purdy in 2025 — but they’re a high-expectation team that likes a strong backup and could, if they wanted to, use Cousins as a pawn in negotiations as Purdy’s window for a mega-deal opens this offseason,” Epstein added about the 49ers angle.
The Vikings current QB1, Sam Darnold, is expected to hit free agency in March if Minnesota doesn’t find a compromise deal to bring him back for Year No. 2. Minnesota, meanwhile, has rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy healing from a meniscus tear and chomping at the bit to take his QB1 job before too long.
Epstein concluded about Cousins to Minny, “Interpersonal dynamics in Minnesota may complicate a reunion so soon after head coach Kevin O’Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah moved on from Cousins. But the league is not missing the irony of the potential football fit a reunion would bring, as Darnold will likely command more than the Vikings want to pay, and injured rookie J.J. McCarthy’s rehabilitation timeline will leave uncertainty.”
The only perk to the Cousins theory is price. For the first time ever, Cousins will be gettable for NFL pennies because of his large Falcons-paid salary. In theory, Minnesota could sign Cousins as a QB2 and insurance policy for McCarthy’s injury recovery.
Minnesota also has Daniel Jones in its roster orbit for the same arrangement.
Cousins will turn 37 in August.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. The show features guests, analysis, and opinion on all things related to the purple team, with 4-7 episodes per week. His Vikings obsession dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ Basset Hounds, and The Doors (the band). He follows the NBA as closely as the NFL.
All statistics provided by Pro Football Reference / Stathead; all contractual information provided by OverTheCap.com.
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