The buzz around Kirk Cousins in Indianapolis is the opposite of what you’d think

INDIANAPOLIS — The idea of a shiny new luxury car, fresh off the lot, sounds like the best idea in the world as you step into your musty 1980 Ford Pinto.

The drive down to the dealership is exciting beyond belief as you envision your new ride that will be transcendent with all the new bells and whistles, not even mentioning comparing it to what you had beforehand.

Everything is great until the moment the salesman puts the lease in front of you and asks you to sign over a payment eclipsing over half your mortgage every month for the next five years. Then reality hits: Can I actually do this?

Much of the same is happening with teams in the Kirk Cousins sweepstakes.

The moment the final whistle sounded on the 2017 NFL season, a drastic number of teams—upwards of seven—fantasized and daydreamed about the opportunity to land the potential free agent.

The moment the Washington Redskins traded for Alex Smith, and it became clear Cousins was going to be on the open market, the excitement in all of these cities hit another all-time high.

Yet with nearly single-digit days left until the big-name quarterback is actually available for teams to pursue, realization appears to have swept over the 2018 NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, drastically dampening the mood and eliminating multiple teams from the race.

It’s not that Cousins himself has done anything to damage his value during the week. In fact, it’s nearly the opposite, as it’s still fully expected that he’ll become the league’s highest-paid player, likely blowing Jimmy Garoppolo’s deal out of the water.

Instead, teams are starting to balk at what paying a quarterback $30 million per year will do, or not do, for their franchise. The two most notable teams—and likely the two favorites in the Cousins sweepstakes—have been at the forefront of this hesitation in Indy: The Denver Broncos and the Minnesota Vikings.

On Wednesday, after fully admitting the team’s desperation for a new signal caller, Vance Joseph and John Elway seemed to hint that the man everyone outside of the building thought they desperately wanted, Cousins, in fact, may not be the right “fit” for the organization moving forward.

On Thursday, in similar fashion, Vikings’ head coach Mike Zimmer gave many indications Minnesota was sailing in the same boat as the Broncos.

“The thing that I told [Vikings’ General Manager] Rick [Spielman] when we sat down at meetings was I said, ‘Look, we’ve won this many games in these many years because of this football team, because we’ve played really good on defense for the most part,’” Zimmer said, laying out his case in front of his boss. “This year, obviously we played so much better on offense, we were able to go so much further than a lot of people thought we would. It’s important that we continue to keep putting pieces in place on the defense.”

Without flat-out saying it, the fifth-year coach backed the elementary phrase “There is no I in team” and that no player is above the rest.

“We’ve won 40 games in the last four years because we’ve had a good football team and I want to make sure that with our team we continue to build and improve, continually improve on defense,” he said. “We’re 30-4 when we’ve scored 21 points, so it’s important we don’t lose the defensive part of the game.”

Those words don’t exactly sound like an organization ready to invest more money in one position on the offensive side of the ball than any team has ever done before. But Zimmer wasn’t done. No, not even close.

“What I don’t want to do is say, ‘Okay, this is one thing, we are going to do this and we are going to take away from the rest of the things that have gotten us to this point,’” Zimmer explained when asked about if it’s difficult to resist potentially reaching for the ‘forbidden fruit’ in free agency, AKA Cousins. “Rob Resinsky, our cap guy, does an outstanding job of saying, ‘Okay, if we do this, then we are going to have to give up here. If we do this, we’re going to have to do this. If we do this, we can add here, we can add there.’ So I think all of those things come into play.”

Selling Kirk Cousins as a player is a piece of cake. As free agency creeps closer and closer, however, the idea of Kirk Cousins at $30 million per year is something teams now are having to talk themselves into. As the buzz around Indianapolis has indicated, the apparent two top contenders for Cousins may not be able to do just that.

While Denver’s next starting quarterback will almost certainly come from a player not currently on the roster, Minnesota is in a much different situation. Only a month removed from making the NFC Championship game, the Vikings are in a rare position having three potential starting quarterbacks on their roster from the year before in Case Keenum, Sam Bradford and Teddy Bridgewater.

The organization, at least in Zimmer’s mind, is in no rush to get fresh blood at that position.

“I think no matter what position it is, when you’re talking about free agency, or you’re talking about people in the draft, I think you would much rather have somebody that knows how you do things—the way you go about your business, the way that we practice, the way that we conduct our meetings, the way that we are in the locker room, the way the culture we’ve built as an organization I think is always more important that you do those things first.”

The question isn’t whether or not to pursue Kirk Cousins. The question now for teams, that will likely determine Cousins landing spot, is can they put the interests of a single player leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the team. This week, that arrow has pointed down.

With rumors spreading like wildfire that the Vikings will kick Keenum to the curb and go all in on Cousins in a matter of days, Zimmer left the country with a few wise words.

“Don’t believe anything you hear,” he said, speaking about the quarterback rumors. “Unless it’s from me.”