The 2022 season will be Kirk Cousins' fifth as the Vikings' quarterback. He's got a new contract that could keep him around for a sixth season, too.
For the second time in three years, the Vikings agreed to a new deal with Kirk Cousins to lower the quarterback's salary cap figure while giving him a raise. Cousins' agent Mike McCartney announced the deal is a one-year extension, which puts the quarterback under contract with the Vikings through the 2023 season.
According to a league source, Cousins will get a $25 million signing bonus and a total of $35 million in new money, all of which is fully guaranteed. He again has a no-trade clause — as he did when he signed his first deal with the Vikings in 2018 — and will make a total of $40 million in cash this year.
The Vikings added two void years to the deal to spread out the impact of Cousins' signing bonus, dropping his 2022 salary cap number from $45.166 million to $31.466 million. The team needed to clear more than $15 million to get under the salary cap by the start of the league year on Wednesday.
Cousins should count for $36.25 million against the Vikings' salary cap in 2023, when he turns 35 years old. If he is not on the roster in 2024, he will carry a $12.5 million cap charge, when a pair of $6.25 million signing bonus prorations from Cousins' two void years hit the cap.
