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Charley Walters: It looks like Vikings will stick with Kirk Cousins for another year

charley walters, pioneer press
·11 min read
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It’s starting to look like the Minnesota Vikings will have Kirk Cousins as their quarterback again next year, and possibly beyond.

Cousins, 34, already is guaranteed $30 million for the 2023 season, the final year of his contract. He has played well enough through the Vikings’ 4-1 start that the notion of trying to trade him for draft picks to get an elite QB next spring might not be a consideration. If the Vikings continue to win, they wouldn’t get a high enough first-round pick to take a top young QB anyway.

There’s even a distinct possibility now that the Vikings, if Cousins continues to play well, next March could extend him for at least a year, through 2024, when he would be 36. A one-year extension would be expected to cost nearly $40 million.

The defending Super Bowl champion Rams, without offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell this season, rank 26th in offense in the 32-team NFL. The Vikings, with O’Connell as head coach and calling plays, rank 10th.

Meanwhile, O’Connell, and the Giants’ Brian Daboll and the Eagles’ Nick Sirianni, at this juncture anyway, are frontrunners for NFL coach of the year.

Released by the Vikings in 2018 after drafting him in the fifth round, Dan Carlson of the Raiders has made 36 straight regular-season field goals, the longest active streak in the NFL. The Vikings’ Greg Joseph has missed four field goals, tied for the most misses of any kicker in the league.

The Vikings the other day signed the hefty defensive lineman they’ve needed since the start of the season, 6-foot-4, 338-pound Khyiris Tonga, who was waived by the Bears six weeks ago.

Cousins will speak to a full Interlachen Country Club at a Twin Cities Dunkers breakfast on Oct. 31.

The Twins have control of batting champion Luis Arraez, 25, for the next three years. Arraez can’t become a free agent until after the 2025 season. He played for $2.125 million this year and can expect at least a $4 million raise if he doesn’t accept an anticipated offseason offer of about $70 million for five years.

It now appears Twins shortstop Carlos Correa’s free-agent market will end up at about $30 million a year for seven years. Correa is 28.

Twins infield-outfield prospect Austin Martin, 23, after seven games in the Arizona Fall League, is hitting .464 with a home run and eight RBIs.

American League Central champion Cleveland’s payroll is $57 million among its 26 rostered players, 28th of baseball’s 30 clubs. Third-place finisher Minnesota’s was $71 million, ranking 16th. The Guardians are the youngest team (26.3 years average) in baseball.

Eight of baseball’s top-10 highest payrolls are in the playoffs.

Before the season, the Twins were projected to win 81.5 games, per BetOnline.ag. They ended up winning 78.

For the first time in nearly 35 years, Hockey Hall of Famer Phil Housley from South St. Paul is taking a pause from the NHL this season.

“Going to take a year off,” Housley, the former Buffalo Sabres head coach and recent Arizona Coyotes assistant said Friday. “I still have a passion for the game, but I want to take a little break, want to spend more time with my family.”

Housley, 58, will consult for the U.S. National Development Team Program in Plymouth, Mich. In 2013, he coached Team USA to the gold medal in the World Under-20 Championship in Russia.

Zach Parise, 38, is playing for $750,000 from the Islanders, but has $7 million coming this season, as well as next, from the Wild, the same as Ryan Suter, 37, who is also getting $4 million this season from the Stars.

Jake Oettinger, the former Lakeville North goaltender, has received a $12 million, three-year deal with Dallas.

It looks like the Twins will use the introduction of their rebranded uniforms — the only major league team to do so for 2023 — to help sell their first-ever corporate jersey patch that could be worth more than $10 million a year to the club. The Wild recently signed TRIA Orthopedics to a patch deal worth nearly $6 million a year for five years.

The Twins have hired PlayFly Premier Partnerships to help them sell the patch. The Wild used Oak View Group to oversee the sale of their jersey patch.

Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck’s Big Ten record, after Saturday’s 26-14 loss to Illinois, is 21-19 over six seasons,10-9 the last three seasons.

Gophers basketball followers this year will see a new, darker-colored Williams Arena floor with a corporate sponsor Cambria insignia.

It’s just a matter of time before a corporation offers enough to rename Williams Arena. That should be worth $1 million a year for 10 years or so. 3M’s naming rights deal with Mariucci Arena is for $11.2 million over 14 years.

That was 15-year-old Sammy Udovich, recently named the Minnesota Golf Association Junior Player of the Year, making two eagles, seven birdies and one bogey for a 10-under 61 from the back tees to tie former Gopher Angus Flanagan’s Southview Country Club course record. Udovich’s round the other day included a 7-under 28 on the back nine.

PGA Tour golfer Steve Stricker’s daughter Izzi, a junior at Waunakee, made six birdies — four in a row — in her final round to win the Wisconsin girls large school championship in Madison last week.

Ex-Vikings QB Todd Bouman’s son Aidan, the former Buffalo High star QB, through the NCAA transfer portal has left Iowa State for South Dakota as a redshirt freshman.

North Oaks Country Club hit a home run with the hiring of Cretin grad Pat Markley as GM. He begins on Monday. His predecessor, Phil Anderson, left to become GM at Hazeltine National, site of the 2004 U.S. Men’s Amateur and 2029 Ryder Cup.

North Oaks, by the way, headed by Tom Lehman, is undergoing a major on-course renovation that includes 24 miles of pipe for a new sprinkler system.

Woodbury soccer senior Xander Anderson, a straight-A student, totaled nine goals in back-to-back games and has 27 for the season.

Twins Hall of Fame retired broadcaster John Gordon, 82, despite seven straight hours of 110-mph winds during hurricane Ian at his Fort Myers, Fla., home, reports no damage. “Didn’t lose a screen or a tree,” Gordon said. “We’re very, very lucky. Can’t wait for the golf course to open.”

Ex-Twins radio voice Pat Hughes of the Cubs is among 10 finalists eligible for the broadcast wing of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Basketball Hall of Famer Tom Ihnot will coach ninth graders at St. Thomas Academy this season.

Ex-Twin Corey Koskie speaks about concussions that curtailed his career at the Twin Cities Orthopedics Baseball Medicine Conference Nov. 5-6 at CHS Field in St. Paul.

Condolences to the family of former St. Cloud State basketball star Tom Ditty, who died at 76 the other day.

Arkansas State offensive coordinator is Keith Heckendorf, the ex-St. Cloud State QB star.

The Gophers have 18 former players in the NHL at the start of this season. There were 30 former Gophers in NHL training camps.

Former hockey Gophers: Mike Anderson resides in Newport Beach, Calif., and is a partner at Craig-Hallum Capital. Craig Johnson is an assistant coach for the Anaheim Ducks.

DON’T PRINT THAT

Prospective Timberwolves-Lynx owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez have six weeks to make their second payment of $275 million to Glen Taylor, who has agreed to sell the teams for $1.5 billion. The pair’s first payment was $275 million last year. At least one more payment — much larger — is to be made before the closing date in December of 2023.

The Wolves, whose roster is the deepest in the franchise’s 33-year history, this year are second in the NBA in new season ticket sales and had a season ticket renewal rate of more than 90 percent.

Tony Oliva, 84, as nice a person as you’ll ever meet, was in a frightful car accident a few weeks ago. A young woman rear-ended him in downtown Minneapolis, hitting his car so hard that the driver air bag went off and probably kept him from smashing his face against the windshield. The impact was so forceful that Oliva’s car, which was totaled, was pushed into a SUV ahead of him.

So what did the Hall of Fame former Twin do? Instead of becoming irate, he grabbed a bobblehead of him that happened to be in his car, signed it and gave it to the woman who hit him.

Oliva told the lady she probably didn’t know who he was, but hopefully her parents do.

Meanwhile, Oliva, who lives in the same Bloomington house he’s had for 50 years and works for the Twins, has been seeing a neurologist while recovering from headaches and a concussion.

After recently losing 6-foot-4 Totino-Grace four-star guard Taison Chatman to Ohio State and 6-10 Lakeville North power forward Nolan Winter to Wisconsin, and last spring 6-2 point guard Tre Holloman from Cretin-Derham Hall to Michigan State, the Gophers should have a decent chance on Monday of getting a commitment from four-star 7-1 Dennis Evans from Hillcrest High in Riverside, Calif.

Evans, who also has Texas Christian as a finalist and is a pal of Gophers 6-7 freshman Jaden Henley of Ontario, Calif., was at the Gophers-Purdue football homecoming loss two weeks ago. Of concern for Minnesota, though, is that TCU is a top-10 NCAA preseason team.

The unranked Gophers, who have just one tender left, have gone all-out in recruitment of Evans. A top-30 prospect, Evans would be the highest-rated Gophers commitment since 6-9 Kris Humphries from Hopkins, signed as a top-15 prospect 19 years ago. Humphries left for the NBA draft (No. 14 overall by Utah) after his freshman season and after leading the Big Ten in scoring and rebounding.

The Gophers do not have a pure center. The 210-pound Evans would join other Big Ten seven-footers Zach Edey (7-4) of Purdue and Hunter Dickinson (7-1) of Michigan.

If 6-11 Gophers transfer Dawson Garcia from Prior Lake has a great season, he could declare for next summer’s NBA draft.

Amir Coffey, who left the Gophers after his junior season, has an $11 million, three-year guarantee with the L.A. Clippers.

Holloman will get minutes as a freshman for the top-15 Spartans this season. He played the entire 15 minutes at the Michigan State Madness scrimmage the other day. The Spartans, who have the toughest nonconference schedule in the Big Ten, play Gonzaga on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in San Diego on Veterans Day (Nov. 11).

The Gophers men’s basketball team was picked to finish 12th, ahead of just Northwestern and Nebraska, in the Big Ten this season, per a Columbus Dispatch and The Athletic media poll.

Ex-Timberwolves VP Fred Hoiberg, 50, whose 9-50 Big Ten Conference record after three seasons coaching Nebraska has him on the hot seat, has acquired four Division I transfers this season.

Wisconsin will pay Paul Chryst an $11 million buyout to go away as football coach. Besides a paycut, Hoiberg’s buyout has been reduced from $18.5 million to $11 million.

The Twins might want to add some speed next season. By far, they had the fewest stolen bases (38) among baseball’s 30 teams. The Yankees had 102 SBs, including 16 by 6-7, 282-pound home run king Aaron Judge and 22 by Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whom they acquired from the Twins in the Josh Donaldson deal.

The Twins had two players with six stolen bases each — Byron Buxton and Nick Gordon.

Donaldson, 36, for $23 million this season, hit just .222 with 15 homers in 132 regular-season games. The Yankees are stuck with his $23 million salary next year, too.

It’s a good bet that Wild star Kirill Kaprizov got out of homeland Russia to Minnesota just in time before President Vladimir Putin decided to press untrained men into military service to fight against Ukraine.

There’s buzz that a golf movie about John Daly, who has played in a couple 3M Open tournaments in Blaine, will have him played by Jonah Hill, per outback.com.

There are 25 former Ohio State players in the NFL this season. There are 11 former Gophers in the NFL this season.

Some 220 Ohio State athletes have received $2.98 million in name, image and likeness endorsement earnings since July, the school announced. No word on Gophers athletes NIL deals.

Minnesota remains in the lower half of the Big Ten in size of athletics endowments.

OVERHEARD

Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor on a New York Post story suggesting prospective investor Alex Rodriguez’s breakup with Jennifer Lopez (estimated wealth $400 million) could jeopardize his part of the deal: “I’ll answer it this way: I saw the story, yes, and that’s all I’m going to say. All I’m interested in is ‘can you make your payments,’ and he said yes.”

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