A Pretty Good Man is Hard to Find

There’s an old put-down that was originally written by author Zora Neale Hurston, though I think I first heard it attributed to Whitey Herzog: “I wish I could buy you for what you are really worth and sell you for what you think you’re worth.”

That quote summarizes the Kirk Cousins experience.

Cousins was never really a self-promoter, unlike the subject of Hurston’s character’s scorn. (The quote is apparently from Moses: Man of the Mountain). Cousins never had to toot his own horn. The quarterback marketplace did the hype work for him. His early-career employers in Washington and Minnesota paid him more than just about anyone thought he was worth, over and over again. 

The Vikings paid Cousins $185 million to be the 7th-to-17th best quarterback in the NFL (based on his DVOA figures) for six years. Cousins was usually just effective enough to make the Vikings, who always fielded balanced, well-built rosters, the NFC’s seventh-best team, back in the days when there were only six playoff spots.

That reminds me of another old joke that I like to regurgitate: The two happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day he buys it and the day he sells it. Those were the two happiest days in the lives of Kirk Cousins’ employers as well. But this old saw comes with a monkey’s paw caveat: life without Cousins is far worse than life with him.

It turns out that reliable median-level quarterback play is worth paying a dizzying premium for. 

The Vikings, as you surely recall, released Cousins after the 2023 season so they could get younger and cheaper and finally break out of their Wild Card rut. It turns out that those first two things don’t guarantee the third. 

The Vikings selected J.J. McCarthy in the 2024 draft. McCarthy got injured. Sam Darnold climbed off the bench and proved to be a younger, feistier variation on Cousins. The Vikings unceremoniously dumped Darnold on the free agent market. McCarthy returned from injury, acting and playing like he was on a guaranteed four-year scholarship. The Vikings, who acquired McCarthy when his market value was highest, traded him in late September when his market value was lowest. Hurston might not care, but Herzog would be aghast. 

The Vikings banished McCarthy to the scout team before trading him. The organization clearly believed that their defense and receivers were so formidable that they could win with anyone at quarterback. Their 6-2 record shows that there is some truth to that logic, but Kyler Murray and Carson Wentz have spent the season doing everything within their power to prove it wrong.

So the Vikings were forced to turn to Cousins to save their season, like prodigal children running back to daddy after burning through their trust funds. Sure, they now get Cousins for what they think he’s worth: a third-round pick, a modest mentor’s salary. But are they now a week/month/year too late?

Also: money was never as much of an issue as Cousins’ detractors (all of us) made it out to be. The Vikings are currently eating $56 million in cap space for dubious acquisitions like Jonathan Allen, Javon Hargrave and (yes) McCarthy. They could always have afforded a veteran starting quarterback, even if it was Darnold instead of Cousins.

As for Cousins’ other employers, Washington has reached the playoffs twice in the nine years since that franchise stopped tagging him every year. Washington went 7-9 in one of those "successful" seasons. Jayden Daniels, the Commanders’ injury-plagued, star-crossed quarterback of the future (?), is doing nothing to dispel comparisons to Robert Griffin III, the ersatz franchise savior whom Cousins supplanted.

The Falcons? They are trade deadline sellers who went 0-2 to start the season and lost a winnable game in overtime because Michael Penix is a souffle that turns into a pancake if you make loud noises around the oven. The Falcons might be 5-4 and cruising to an NFC South title with Cousins at quarterback. My evidence for that assertion: the Raiders are 4-5 with a weaker overall roster.

So it’s easy to make fun of just-good-enough quarterbacks until yours is no longer just good enough. 

Waiting for Cousins news all day on Tuesday left me feeling slightly delirious. This guy was our designated punching bag for a decade. Now we wait with bated breath for him? The 38-year-old Cousins holding the NFL world hostage for a full news cycle felt more like an act of retribution than redemption. He heard what us wiseapples said about him during his peak. Now, at a time when he should be stepping aside for Fernando Mendoza, he wanted to make us bow, scrape and beg him to save a Super Bowl contender and potentially rewrite both this season’s narrative and his own.

(Cousins had nothing to do with how Tuesday really played out, of course. The trade deadline just plays tricks with an NFL writer's addled mind.)

Cousins was always the uncoolest of the uncool quarterbacks. At his peak, I could generate over a million pageviews just by ripping him on Bleacher Report. (Was that my peak, too? NOT TODAY, INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS.) Cousins was the apotheosis of the boring middle-manager quarterback whose salary was holding his team back. Every clever fan, Madden-trained GM, desk-jockey analyst, aspiring filmbro and smart-alecky columnist knew that the Vikings would be better off launching Cousins into orbit and then dipping into a stacked quarterback draft class for a can't-miss prospect. 

Which brings us to Tuesday.

I don’t think Cousins can get the Vikings to the Super Bowl: he's not good enough, and the conference and division are too tough.

I do think Cousins can suture the Vikings' offensive bleeding, apply anti-lock brakes to their current losing streak before it's too late, and collect enough Falcons-Panthers-Commanders-Jets wins in the second half of the season to get the Vikings to the playoffs. Cousins can keep Justin Jefferson from reaching for his golf bags. He will do what he has always done: raise his team’s floor. It’s up to Jefferson, the defense and the others to crash through the ceiling.

Cousins will keep the Vikings relevant into January. That matters. A lot. To ticket holders and teammates. To coaches. There's a huge difference between being 10-6 and battling the Bears for a playoff spot on Sunday night in Week 18, and finishing 8-9 amid obituaries for a plan and an era.

That’s why the Vikings paid Cousins $185 million for six years. Real stakeholders don’t get to point and laugh at Wentz, then shrug and write a column giving the Jaguars an A+ for their deadline trades. 

Cousins was always worth more than we thought he was worth. For a Vikings team that’s starving for a little uncool, management-level quarterback play, he currently looks like a bargain.