Is Kirk Cousins really better than Jalen Hurts? The real question is value
Which quarterback would you rather have? Once you factor in salary, the answer is obvious.
I ask myself a lot of questions on Sunday mornings.
Did I miss daylight savings?
Are there any sandwich shops open?
Is Kirk Cousins actually good?
The last one is what woke me up today.
Once upon a time, I understood Kirk Cousins. I resisted him at first. He was little more than a fourth-round draft pick selected by a team that had already drafted a quarterback 100 picks earlier. At No. 2 overall. Anything he accomplished from there on out was more than he should have accomplished. One year after Washington selected Cousins at No. 102 overall, the Eagles selected Matt Barkley at No. 98.
Nobody hates Matt Barkley. But nobody loves him either. Granted, he’s making a half mil this year, so he probably doesn’t care.
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Kirk Cousins? He is earning $40 million. For this season. The Fiscal Year 2022. That’s roughly $2.5 million per game, which is roughly twice what Jalen Hurts will make for the entire season (including his $75,000 roster bonus).
That’s not class warfare, mind you. It’s just reality. The game is the game. The business is also the business. The Vikings and Eagles both must adhere to a salary cap that limits them to a total payroll of $208.2 million. Minnesota will allocate roughly 15% of that total to Cousins. The Eagles will allocate less than a half of a percentage point to Hurts.
The NFL salary cap is fungible, of course. In the real world, Bernie Madoff goes to prison. In the NFL, he’d be Howie Roseman. I mean that mostly as a joke, but also as a compliment to the latter.
Roseman’s decision to draft Hurts in the second round in 2020 could not have worked out any better. It’s irrelevant whether Carson Wentz’s brain was scrambled upon arrival or whether it became that way later. Hurts was a better prospect at a fraction of the price of a Tua Tagovailoa or Jordan Love, both drafted in the first round ahead of him. He was and is and always will be a better player than Justin Fields or Trey Lance, both drafted in the top 11 the following year. Assuming that Wentz’s tenure would have worked out the same whether or not the Eagles had drafted Hurts, they were incredibly wise to draft him. Because here they are now.
And here we are, back at our question. Cousins will count $31 million against the Vikings cap this season. Hurts will count $1.9 million. In between is roughly $29 million. What follows is a list of players that $29 million buys you:
A.J. Brown, $5.6 million
Haason Reddick, $6.7 million
James Bradberry, $5.0 million
Fletcher Cox, $4.0 million
Derek Barnett, $8.5 million
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That’s not to say that the Eagles can make a habit of what they’ve done. If Hurts is ever making $40 million, and you subtract all of those players, are you any better off than if you had Cousins?
But that’s another question for another day. The question now: Is Cousins actually worth it? Is he actually a good quarterback?
The short answer is no, assuming you define “good quarterback” as “one whom you can watch regularly without experiencing periodic bouts of suffocating despair.” Cousins is a “good quarterback” in the way baked chicken is a “good meal.” Better than a flash-fried squirrel? Sure. But he’s nobody’s last meal.
The numbers? They say differently. Cousins has a vocal cabal of supporters who will remind you of that. In their defense, they are impressive numbers.
Among players with at least 2,000 career pass attempts, Cousins ranks fourth all-time in passer rating, behind only Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, and Russell Wilson and just ahead of Drew Brees. That’s a hell of a top five, with a total of six Super Bowl appearances and four wins represented. Of course, none of them is represented by Cousins, who has won exactly one postseason game in three tries as a starter.
Yet, the numbers roll on ...
Yards-per-attempt? Eighth behind Mahomes, Steve Young, Kurt Warner, Tony Romo, Wilson, Philip Rivers, and Aaron Rodgers.
Adjusted yards per attempt? Fifth, behind Mahomes, Rodgers, Wilson, and Young.
Number of seasons with 4,000-plus passing yards? Ninth, behind Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Rivers, Brees, Matt Ryan, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, Eli Manning, and Kirk Cousins.
Number of seasons with 25-plus passing touchdowns? Tenth, behind Brady, Manning, Brees, Rodgers, Rivers, Brett Favre, Ryan, Ben Roethlisberger, and Wilson.
Yet here are the numbers that matter most: 60-59-2.
That’s Cousins’ record in the regular season as a starting quarterback. It only gets worse if you add in his 1-2 record in the playoffs.
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To be fair, Cousins’ record gets a lot worse if you remove his 6-3 record against the Eagles. But let’s keep the pertinent question in mind. Would you rather have Cousins at a cap number of $31 million or Hurts at a cap number of $2 million?
If the answer isn’t obvious now, it should be by the end of Monday night. Cousins may have won two straight regular-season games against the Eagles, but the last time these two teams faced each other in the playoffs, the Vikings were quarterbacked by Case Keenum.
Cousins is the epitome of the quarterback who is good enough to keep you competitive but not nearly good enough to get you over the top. Hurts may very well turn out to be in the same class. Right now, though, he is $30 million cheaper. We’ll see how that expresses itself on Monday night.