For Kirk Cousins, it's a last dance for one
The veteran quarterback remained in Minnesota while the rest of the roster turned over and the team prepared for the future
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — When Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman entered the 1997-98 season, they knew it was the final time they were all going to be together. It was clear that general manager Jerry Krause was going to break up the team, opting to rebuild rather than continue to lean on aging stars and that’s exactly what happened after they won the championship in ‘98. Many years later, that run to NBA Finals glory and the subsequent tear down provided us with one of the great sports documentaries ever in The Last Dance.
The film made “the last dance” part of the sports lexicon. Any time a team has been together a while and the writing is on the wall that they are going to be broken up after the season, it’s now called a last dance. Even if nothing will reach the level of the Bulls’ super team being dismantled, it turned out the 2022 Minnesota Vikings were a last-dance team. Before their playoff game against New York, numerous players mentioned the realistic possibility that it was their last time together and their comments turned out to be prescient because once the offseason began, so did the bloodletting. One by one, stars went out the door, starting with Pro Bowlers Adam Thielen and Eric Kendricks and then Dalvin Tomlinson and Patrick Peterson and then Za’Darius Smith and Dalvin Cook.
That was the group that was tasked with getting them back to the NFC Championship. Ever since losing to the Eagles in 2017, they had been chasing a return to championship weekend, whether it was signing Kirk Cousins to the largest contract ever at the time or extending Mike Zimmer after a victory against the Saints in the playoffs or a trade for Yannick Ngakoue. Each attempt fell short, so the last-ditch effort was changing the culture under Kevin O’Connell and hoping that a down NFC and a few breaks could get them back.
And everything did break their way until it didn’t. It was as memorable of a last dance season that you are going to find, even if it ended in the first round of the playoffs. Whether it was forcing late turnovers, hitting game-winning field goals, finishing clutch drives or any other way the Vikings could find to win games in 2022, they did and it was a carnival ride for fans. But in the playoffs, they came one magical drive short and that was the last that beloved group would be on the field together.
Now they have a new starting running back. A rookie receiver who’s taking over for Adam Thielen. On defense, if you didn’t track the moves this offseason you might recognize only about three people.
Unlike with the Bulls in 1998, Vikings fans were ready for this. We are privy to enough information about age curves and contracts to know that another attempt at running it back wouldn’t have been as blissful. They understand one-score game regression and they were tired of the same old approach ending with the same old results, even if it was more joyful in 2022.
Backed by fans or not, it is still pretty darn rare to see a team give the green light on a tear down after a 13-win season. That’s what makes it so last-dancey. Normally if a team comes close, they make a big offseason splash move and give it another shot.
In the middle of both worlds, the last-dance team and the new-look Vikings, is Kirk Cousins.
Only Brian O’Neill, Danielle Hunter, Harrison Smith and CJ Ham remain from the 2018 team he joined with hopes of being the final piece that would get the Vikings over the top. If you believe the rumor mill, the team’s brass considered both putting him on a bus out of town with the rest of the aging players and giving him a short-term extension. But neither of those things happened, placing him on a team that entered training camp with a press conference centered around the idea of a “competitive rebuild.” The irony is that he makes the first part possible.
If the Vikings had moved on from Cousins this offseason and started a rookie or Trey Lance or a journeyman veteran like Marcus Mariota or Andy Dalton, nobody would view them as a club that could win the NFC North. They certainly wouldn’t project as a top 10 offense, even with Justin Jefferson at his peak powers.
But that doesn’t mean there is much believe in this overhauled team. PFF ranked them 15th in their market-implied power rankings, DraftKings has the over/under at 8.5 and the money is slightly more on the side of them missing the playoffs.
It’s a strange place for Cousins to be. In a way, it feels like he should have been wooed by the Jets or joined a Saints team that feels like they are a quarterback away from being a contender.
You rarely see this type of situation from a QB who was ranked in The Athletic’s QB Tiers article as 12th best in the league. Cousins, Ryan Tannehill and Baker Mayfield are the only opening day quarterbacks whose contracts run out after 2024. Though once upon a time the Ravens took the same approach with Joe Flacco and they won the Super Bowl. Ya never know.
Cousins seems OK with all of it. Earlier this offseason he gave a 437-word answer to a question about his future, saying he’s always felt been unsure of the future entering every season, even going back to high school.
“This has kind of been a part of my story,” Cousins said. “I walked off the field the last game of my high school career, no scholarship offers. So that whole season, you get the question from the Holland Sentinel, ‘How are you focusing on that? How are you handling that?’ I learned, you’ve gotta focus on winning football games. And if you win football games and do your part and put your work in, the rest will take care of itself.”
The Vikings seem OK with the idea of QB uncertainty. Hey, did you see those college quarterbacks on Saturday? Maybe Kyler Murray will be available. Tom Brady comeback anyone? Oh, the possibilities.
“You always have to be scenario driven in this job,” GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said in July. “Prepared for every potential outcome. When you go to the draft, you have to be prepared for who’s there, who’s available, what happens if they are not available? Trade back, trade up? So, that’s what we do in this job.”
Wait, don’t get distracted by future QB talk, there’s a season to be played.
And that season comes along with some last-dancey questions for Cousins. What would he need to do in order for the team to beg him to come back? Another 13 wins? Top five offense? Pull somebody from a burning car like KJ Osborn did this offseason?
Or would Cousins rack up double-digit wins and 4,500 yards passing and then block the Vikings’ number? After all, when the new regime took over, he made a comment about needing to win in order to be a Viking for life and then won 13 games and got rewarded with a lump of coal in the pocket of his Khol’s outfit. Now Daniel Jones makes more than he does.
What if they get off to a slow start. Philly, L.A. and K.C. make up three of the first five games. Would they try to trade him if things go sideways early?
Or even worse, what if it’s just OK? What if they do exactly what Vegas thinks they’re going to do. Eight wins. If that’s the case, did it make sense to keep Cousins rather than getting started on the future QB search?
Cousins’s last dance starts on Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It’s a vital game considering the schedule that follows. The Bucs had a top 10 defense in net yards per pass attempt allowed last season so probably it won’t be a day at the state fair either.
Cousins isn’t the type to be bothered by noise or distractions, though he has occasionally shown that he cares about a shortage of belief in his talents, whether it was the “you like that?” moment in D.C. or shaking Mike Zimmer on the sideline after a fourth-quarter comeback.
In training camp, he’s seemed loose and ready to roll into his last dance. One thing we can always be sure about with the Vikings is that you never know what’s coming next. On Sunday, we start finding out what Cousins’s potential final season in purple will bring.