NFL analyst believes that Kirk Cousins is heading to San Francisco

While we wait for the 2020 NFL season to officially come to an end when Super Bowl LV kicks off on Sunday afternoon, the offseason rumor mill is starting to spin, and today one prominent NFL analyst made a pretty bold statement involving the Minnesota Vikings.

Ross Tucker, who currently works as an NFL analyst for Westwood One (among other jobs) said a couple of hours ago that it “sounds like” Kirk Cousins is going to be the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers in 2021. To say that this would come as a shocking development is an understatement, particularly given the rest of what Tucker has said.

Tucker says that Jimmy Garoppolo, who is currently the starting quarterback for the 49ers, is going to be the starting quarterback in New England next year. You would have to think that if the Vikings were to trade Cousins to San Francisco that Garoppolo would be a part of the return coming back to Minnesota. Otherwise, if you’re the Vikings, you’ve not only committed to drafting a quarterback in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft, you’ve committed to starting that quarterback immediately. . .unless you think that Sean Mannion or whatever random veteran the Vikings could potentially pluck out of free agency would be the answer.

(They’re not the answer.)

To be perfectly clear, I don’t think that the Vikings are making a move with Kirk Cousins. But if they are so inclined, they need to make it relatively soon. As we’ve mentioned in this space before, if Cousins is on the Vikings’ roster on the third day of the 2021 league year this March, then his salary for 2022 becomes guaranteed. Basically, if the Vikings want to get out from underneath Cousins’ contract, they can’t dawdle around to wait and see what happens.

Is a Cousins trade possible? Sure it is, I guess. At this point just about anything is possible. Do I think it’s likely? No.

As Ted put it on the most recent episode of Vikings Report with Drew and Ted, at this point Cousins is Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman’s guy. Those two guys are tied to Kirk Cousins, and they’ll go wherever Cousins’ right arm takes them. . .whether it’s to the Super Bowl, the unemployment line, or somewhere in-between. The Vikings appear to be ready to “run it back” in 2021 with the hopes that the guys that they lost to injury in 2020 (Danielle Hunter, Michael Pierce, Anthony Barr, et al) can shore up the defense enough to let this team win the way Mike Zimmer wants. They’re not doing that with a rookie quarterback or a veteran that, quite frankly, isn’t as good as Kirk Cousins is.

Lord knows that we need something to talk about this offseason, what with the draft still more than two months away and free agency looking more and more like a thing the Vikings won’t be big players in. I suppose this is as good as anything.