MINNEAPOLIS _ For all the talk of the Vikings giving Kirk Cousins a three-year guaranteed $84 million contract, with $24 million for 2018, it's worth noting that the Vikings will be spending only $4 million more on quarterbacks in 2018 than in 2017.
That total doesn't include a potential $2 million bonus he could earn if the Vikings reach the Super Bowl.
The cap hit for the quarterback position will land somewhere around $26.5 million between Cousins, newly traded backup Trevor Siemian and third stringer Kyle Sloter.
In 2017 the Vikings entered the season with $22.5 million in payroll at the quarterback position with $18 million for Sam Bradford, $2.2 million for Teddy Bridgewater, $1.9 million for Case Keenum and $438,000 for Sloter.
That means that for the Vikings to secure Cousins, who they believe can become a foundational quarterback, their cap hit will be just $4 million more for quarterbacks in 2018.
General manager Rick Spielman said that the Vikings knew they had great options at quarterback, and great cap flexibility, which allowed them to chase the player they wanted.
"I think we evaluated our roster and liked all three of our quarterbacks. But the No. 1 priority was getting the offensive coordinator (John DeFilippo) in place. Once we got the offensive coordinator in place, we did a quarterbacks study with myself, (head) Coach Zim (Mike Zimmer), (assistant general manager) George Paton, (quarterbacks coach) Kevin Stefanski and John DeFilippo and we went through and evaluated our guys but also wanted to look and kind of compare against Kirk Cousins.
"We felt we had a lot of options going into this thing, but we just felt that Kirk Cousins was a unique opportunity that doesn't come along often. We were aggressive and decided to try to go after him once free agency started."
When it came to the contract, Spielman said that was the price of doing business.
"When you have a quarterback of this stature that gets out in the open market you know what you're going to have to do," he said. "We were willing to go down that road. I think after talking with our ownership and getting a blessing from the Wilf family (Zygi Wilf, Mark Wilf and Leonard Wilf), to go ahead and get this quarterback, we didn't have any hesitation about doing that."
