2 pros and 3 cons of playing out the final year of Kirk Cousins’ contract

The Vikings will have to sacrifice the defense once again

A big excuse for Kirk Cousins lately has been the lack of defense presented by the Minnesota Vikings, which is true to an extent. Minnesota’s defense has taken a step back over the past two seasons for a number of reasons but it is also fair to accredit some of that to the money spent on Kirk Cousins.

The Vikings have been able to spend a little bit of money on the defense to make up the difference but those investments haven’t paid off. If they want to retain Cousins at his current cap hit for one more season, the Vikings are probably going to have to make some tough decisions elsewhere.

Danielle Hunter has effectively missed two seasons due to injury and the Vikings just so happen to have been bad defensively over that span. He is the biggest candidate to be moved in order to free up cap space heading into 2022.

Eric Kendricks, Harrison Smith, and Michael Pierce are also in the mix to see their Vikings’ tenures come to an end. If any of those players are to be out of the picture, the Vikings are going to have an even more difficult time defensively.

If that is the case, then the Vikings are not going to win as many games as expected because the offense, led by Kirk Cousins, is not built to consistently win shootouts. We will just repeat the same cycle once again at this time next year with the fanbase split on the quarterback making $40+ million to not carry a bad defense.