Derek Carr and Geno Smith set the price for a Kirk Cousins extension – do the Vikings want to pay it?
Wait, the mid-tier quarterback contract exists now?
As of Monday, March 6, 2023, the NFL has mid-tier QB contracts thanks to Derek Carr and Geno Smith.
The New Orleans Saints landed Carr in free agency to the tune of four years, $150 million. Or at least that’s the terms that his agency would prefer you report. A contract breakdown at OverTheCap.com shows Carr’s deal as effectively two years, $70 million. The Saints designed the contract to carry a low cap hit for 2023 ($7.2 million) before it rises to $35.7 million in 2024. After that Carr’s number shoots up over $45 million but the Saints can move on with a limited amount of dead space ($17 million in 2025 and $11 million in 2026) if they choose.
A few hours later, Geno Smith signed a three-year contract worth $105 million with the Seahawks following his breakout year in 2022. The guaranteed money, however, is $52 million. The full details and breakdown are not yet known but it is safe to assume that it’s going to be closer to a two-year deal with flexibility for the Seahawks after that.
Neither of these contracts begin to approach the average annual value or guarantees of the top QB deals. There are eight QBs making more AAV than Carr with all of them topping $40 million and five over $45 million. In terms of guarantees, DeShaun Watson’s $230 million and Russell Wilson’s $124 million fully guaranteed dwarf Carr and Smith’s new contracts.
Prior to these two agreements, the comparable contracts that Kirk Cousins and the Minnesota Vikings could work from included Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Dak Prescott and Matthew Stafford — all over $40 million AAV and three of the four north of $95 million guaranteed. It appeared before Monday’s news that the only two options for Cousins and the Vikings were A) letting him play out his current deal B) paying him like Wilson or Rodgers. Now it seems plausible that the most recent deals, which fall below the elite QB contracts, could lay an outline for the Vikings and Cousins.
Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said they would look for “solutions” but acknowledged that the Vikings are looking for flexibility and Cousins will be aiming for security in a new deal. Could the middle ground be a similar deal to Smith/Carr?
For comparison’s sake, here’s how the three performed last year:
Cousins: 4,547 yards, 29 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, 92.5 rating, 77.4 PFF grade
Smith: 4,282 yards, 30 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, 100.9 rating, 79.8 PFF grade
Carr: 3,522 yards, 24 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, 86.3 rating, 66.6 PFF grade
The Cousins extension situation might come down to whether the Vikings want to be locked into two more years.
New Orleans sees Carr as a major upgrade of the quarterbacks they have had in place since Drew Brees retired i.e. Jameis Winston, Taysom Hill, Andy Dalton. The Seahawks instantly found their Wilson replacement and now have time to draft and develop at QB behind Smith or roll with him if he continues to play at a high level and the team becomes a powerhouse around his late-career resurgence.
The Vikings are in a different position with numerous parts of the roster needing refurbishment and little cap space or draft capital to work with. On Monday they cut veteran linebacker Eric Kendricks to create $9.5 million in cap space and still stand $15 million over the cap (per OTC). They presently only possess two top-100 draft picks and have uncertainty about whether the 2022 class will bear future starters.
The front office could view their timeline as drafting a quarterback either this year or next year and building around that young player. Or they could see a 13-win season with Cousins as something they can continue to build upon.
“Having a good level quarterback is a necessary condition, Kirk meets that threshold, so we know that,” Adofo-Mensah said at the Combine. “How do you build the rest of the team around him to make sure that you can win in that way? Different quarterbacks require different things around them, but we know that for sure, he meets that threshold. How long does he meet that threshold? Those are things we’ve got to answer. Is there a chance to add somebody maybe with different skill sets? Those are all questions we’ve got to answer.”
From Cousins’s perspective, it’s hard to see him having more leverage in the future than he does at this moment. He’s coming of a winning season in which he came through in many clutch situations and put together one of his best games of the year in the playoffs against the Giants. If he waits another year and the Vikings don’t repeat the success of 2022, he will still absolutely have suitors because of QB scarcity but will the price be higher than it is today, particularly since a mid-tier market has emerged? That’s a hard bet for his side to make.
So it appears the price is set and whether the Vikings go down a similar road as the Saints and Seahawks with their QBs will tell us everything about how the team sees its next few seasons. Without an extension, a roster reset is imminent. With an extension, the “competitive rebuild” has to lean far more toward the “competitive” side.
Related: Vikings release Eric Kendricks, which may be just the beginning
