When Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was hired in 2022, he termed his team-building approach a “competitive rebuild,” a strategy he’s reiterated several times since. But being competitive and rebuilding are goals that will always exist in some degree of conflict, and thus far in Adofo-Mensah’s tenure, the competitive interest has seemed to outweigh the rebuilding one, evidenced by decisions to extend quarterback Kirk Cousins’s contract and spend draft capital to trade for tight end T.J. Hockenson.
More than a quarter into the 2023 season, though, the Vikings are sitting at 1-4. The historically good luck the Vikings enjoyed last season, which helped them get to 13-4, has turned, um, dramatically. Minnesota lost a fumble on its opening drive Sunday against the Chiefs, the third straight game in which they’ve had a turnover on their first possession, which is honestly impressive, and they’ve lost a league-high eight fumbles in five games. The Vikings are not as bad as their record indicates, but being better than 1-4 does not make you good. They are tied for 20th in point differential and are already three games behind the Lions in the NFC North.
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The scales may have tipped toward a rebuild on Tuesday, when Minnesota put its second-most important player, All-Pro receiver Justin Jefferson, on injured reserve, ensuring that he will miss at least its next four games due to the strained right hamstring he suffered in the loss to Kansas City. The “at least” is there because Jefferson’s timeline is reportedly TBD, based not only on his recovery, but also on the Vikings’ competitiveness and how he views the potential risk of getting hurt again, particularly in the absence of a new long-term contract, one that could reset the receiver market. Minnesota and Jefferson negotiated this summer in the hope of reaching an agreement on a contract extension but were unable to find enough common ground. They broke off negotiations last month, and Jefferson, whose 4,825 receiving yards through three years were the most in NFL history, said he’s seeking a deal that acknowledges that he has “done something that no one has ever done in the history of the game.”
I assume I don’t need to convince you that losing Jefferson is the thing that takes this Vikings season from bad to worse. But just in case: Beyond, you know, having more yards than anyone else before him through three years, Jefferson entered Week 5 as the league leader in receiving yards (543) and was tied for third in catches (33). He’s never missed a game before, and he’s played 88 percent of the Vikings’ offensive snaps over the course of his three-plus seasons.
So, when the season circles the drain, it’s time for the rebuild to commence. And the central question of any Vikings rebuild has to be about what they’ll do with Cousins.
The 35-year-old quarterback will be a free agent after this season, so unless Minnesota is planning to sign him to another mega-deal, the most prudent choice would be to look for trading partners and try to get something in return for him before the October 31 deadline.
On the face of it, it seems like a move that should naturally happen. Even though any team trading for him would need to be prepared to sign Cousins to a hefty extension, he should, in theory, be an attractive option for teams looking for a quick upgrade. Patrick Mahomes he is not, but Cousins ranks first in the NFL in passing touchdowns, with 13, and second in passing yards, with 1,498. He doesn’t rate quite so highly in the advanced metrics, but he’s still 10th in RBSDM’s overall efficiency metric. Teams like the Jets, Falcons, Steelers, Patriots, and Titans aren’t getting anything close out of their current quarterbacks.
Cousins’s base salary this season is $10 million. If the Vikings traded him this week, the acquiring team would owe up to $7.2 million for the rest of the year. If they waited until the trade deadline, it would be only $5.55 million. A bargain! Of the teams listed above, only the Patriots and Steelers don’t have that space currently available, but most teams could massage the salary cap by $5 million if they really wanted to and push the money it would take to do an extension into the future.
But finding the right trading partner will be tricky.
The Jets are the team that could benefit the most from an immediate upgrade at quarterback. The Jets, however, have put themselves in a neat organizational pickle by tying the direction of the franchise to the needs of a different veteran quarterback who is not currently playing for them while he recovers from a torn Achilles tendon.
The Falcons have a shot to win the NFC South in spite of second-year quarterback Desmond Ridder’s poor play, but Atlanta has seemed determined to be patient with Ridder and didn’t go after a quarterback in the draft or via a trade this offseason, even though it could have. (Lamar Jackson was right there!)
The Bucs could do it, though they rank 25th in salary cap space, with $3.4 million, and would have to do some maneuvering. Also, Baker Mayfield has been playing well and would probably spontaneously combust if Cousins showed up. The Titans have a bit more financial flexibility, and it’s unclear how much of an upgrade they’d see with Cousins compared to 35-year-old Ryan Tannehill.
And then there is the complication of Cousins’s no-trade clause; he would have to sign off on any potential deal. If he doesn’t want to go back to Washington—one of the teams with a clear need for a better quarterback—or play for a defensive head coach like Robert Saleh or Bill Belichick (or if he isn’t happy with the Kohl’s options in suburban Atlanta), he can say no. Trying to understand what makes Cousins tick is a black box I’m not personally willing to open, but he’s said he appreciates continuity with a team and a system, so he might prefer to stay in Minnesota—lost season be damned.
There is also the possibility that the Vikings simply don’t want to initiate this sort of massive rebuild. It’s pretty easy to see how a team could do better than Cousins, but it could also do a lot worse. Cousins is the NFL’s Joe Bauers, the corporal from Mike Judge’s cult-favorite movie Idiocracy who was chosen by the U.S. military for a cryogenic hibernation experiment because he is average in every way: from heart rate to IQ to temperament.
That’s Cousins. He is a 70-degree day. He is the high point of the bell curve. In Idiocracy, Bauers wakes up 500 years in the future only to find that he’s now, by far, the smartest man in a world that has drastically devolved. It’s a lampooning of the anti-intellectual tendencies of modern society, but the point remains—there are definitionally worse things to be than average.
Before getting hired in Minnesota, Adofo-Mensah worked in the front offices in Cleveland and San Francisco, two organizations that have been comfortable making aggressive maneuvers at quarterback. His résumé suggests that he’d be willing to do the same in Minnesota—to accept the risk that comes with letting go of a stable quarterback like Cousins in the hope of finding one who belongs among the NFL’s elite. The moves he’s made (or, notably, not made) that have allowed Cousins to get this close to free agency in the first place, and the fact that he moved on from veterans like Dalvin Cook and Adam Thielen, indicate that the rebuild is still an active part of the plan. But it takes two—or, in this case, three—parties to make a trade like this happen, and that’s why a Cousins trade may be harder to pull off than it seems.
