Shipley: Once the purported answer to the Vikings’ Super Bowl dreams, Kirk Cousins is now the last best option

· Yahoo Sports

Well, Kirk Cousins is back and we will learn soon enough if he is the right man. He was deemed the right man in Minnesota once already, but it didn’t quite work out for anyone but Cousins, who played six seasons for the Vikings and left town with $180 million and one playoff win.

Maybe the second time will be the charm, but don’t get too excited. The eye test tells us what ails coach Kevin O’Connell’s once exciting offense requires more than a veteran quarterback whose legacy will be something a tier above competence.

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An outsider could easily look at the NFC standings and wonder what the panic is all about. The Vikings are 6-2 and hold a tiebreaker over first-place Chicago in the North Division. Every. Body. Relax.

But those who have watched the Vikings play all season know this team is perilously close to wasting a generational defense. An offense that started slowly has gotten progressively worse and ran the car into the ditch Monday night in an ugly 23-6 loss to Buffalo at U.S. Bank Stadium.

Backup quarterback Carson Wentz was under center, and while the Tuesday afternoon trade deadline demanded that O’Connell and general manager Nolan Teasley take action, it’s revealing that they decided to move on with Cousins rather than give Kyler Murray, who missed Sunday’s horror show with a hamstring strain, another chance.

There’s no more time for dinking around.

It will be difficult if not impossible to replicate this defense next season with defensive coordinator Brian Flores a strong candidate for another head coaching gig and key players such as Andrew Van Ginkel, Blake Cashman, Isaiah Rodgers and Harrison Smith are playing on expiring contracts.

And the offense, well, here we are, in a pickle years in the making.

Letting Sam Darnold go after a 14-3 season was a mistake. Drafting J.J. McCarthy with the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft was a whiff, further exacerbated by O’Connell insisting, or hoping beyond hope, that “Nine” would mature into the kind of leader and decision-maker required of an NFL quarterback.

Finally, choosing and signing Kyler Murray to be the key that would unlock last spring was a mistake, albeit an inexpensive one, that has superstar Justin Jefferson wondering whether he’s wasting his prime here.

That’s why this happened: Years of being wrong.

The Vikings brass had to do something to try defibrillating this offense, and
Cousins was the obvious choice for a team out of other options. If this were grade school — and let’s face it, in the NFL it often seems that way — Cousins would be the third or fourth guy you’d pick for your kickball team.

We’ve been here before.

In March 2018, the Vikings made a leap of faith and deemed Cousins to be the guy who could galvanize an offense that stalled in the 2017 NFC Championship and lead Minnesota to its first Super Bowl appearance since Winter 1977.

He signed three contracts — a then-record, $84 million, fully guaranteed free agent deal in 2020 and two subsequent extensions worth another $101 million — and put up big numbers, completing 67 percent of his passes for 23,265 yards and 170 touchdowns in six seasons.

Cousins has always been a prolific passer. He just never won many big games, 1-3 in four postseason starts over 11-plus full NFL seasons, leading the Vikings to a first-round victory in New Orleans — the high-water mark for a tenure that ended Oct. 29, 2023, with a busted Achilles in Green Bay.

Where the Vikings, and maybe even Cousins, will play on Sunday.

Back with a Vikings team chasing a Super Bowl dream, Cousins has been given a late chance to rewrite the story of his entire career in the place he simultaneously became a star and a disappointment. What a chance to close a historic redemption arc. If this works, it will be one of greatest NFL redemption stories ever told.

If it doesn’t, Vikings fans can indulge in one last, vitriolic, “I knew it.”

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