Best Of - NFL Trade Deadline REACTION, Cousins to Vikings, Downs to Chiefs, NFC playoff race + Week 10 Picks

Nick Wright (0:00)

Welcome to the best of the week for What's Wright? with Nick Wright. The best takes and moments from this week on the show. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_2 (0:09)

So you couldn't have been more correct. The Vikings went out and got Kirk Cousins, and now they obviously had that very solid defense and thought that they were a Kirk Cousins away from being a true contender. Do you think that they were correct?

Nick Wright (0:21)

So listen, we have a devout Vikings fan on this show, our guy Paul, and for Vikings fans, I am legitimately happy for you because it looked like you were just almost guaranteed to squander a truly great defense with truly disastrous quarterback play. And this now gives you a real chance to win a playoff game for the first time. God, when is the last time the Vikings won a playoff game? I, oh, I know when it was. It was 20, well, it was, it was when they were in the NFC championship game that I was at the, so the 2017 season that they lost when Case Keenum was playing to them. Oh no, that's actually not the last time they won a playoff game because they won a, they won a wild card game a couple of years later. So when a playoff game for the first time in seven years, go on a real playoff run for the first time in a decade, you have a playoff caliber and not playoff caliber defense. You have a championship caliber defense and you now obviously have a quarterback who is very familiar with that offensive system, who is very familiar with that head coach, who had a ton of individual and some regular season, not so much postseason, but some regular season team success in Minnesota. He did win. I had forgotten about that. Overtime playoff went over the Saints. Now that I'm saying it, I can remember the pass to the corner of the end zone that in 2019 that they won. And then the next game in the playoffs against Paul, you can correct me in the doc if I'm wrong, that you guys lost in 2019 was the game the Niners never threw the ball. They just ran all over, I think that was the game where Jimmy G was like 6 of 8, but it doesn't matter, they just ran all over that Viking Stevens. But that's either here or there, that's not the point. Those are the Mike Zimmer Vikings, those are pre-Kevin O'Connell Vikings anyway. So this is a good move. There is no way around it.

The Carson Wentz was unplayable and Kyler is banged up.

And I hope Vikings fans understand my commentary on this move that I've shared quite a bit on TV and I will share again here, which is I endorse the move. I think you are better. Cousins has been very good this year, like shockingly good. 20 touchdowns, 8 picks on a team without a consistent running game, without a great receiver, like the numbers have been good. The Raiders' problem is not their offense. All of that is super positive.

But the process to get here was so ass-backwards. And the sequence of events. Here is, under Kevin O'Connell, you know, one of those quarterback whisperers, here is his quarterback decision tree with the Minnesota Vikings.

They have Kirk Cousins. In 2023, he tears his Achilles in the midst of what was a brilliant individual season for him. A 104 rating, 18 touchdowns, five picks, that, you know, his stats were unreal. He had thrown, if I remember correctly, those five picks were disproportionately late in games, kind of like crippling at the moment, but he was having a great year. He then wanted to stay in Minnesota. Minnesota let him know that they would be drafting a quarterback high, and because of that, and money, I'm sure, he went to Atlanta. The quarterback the Vikings drafted high was JJ McCarthy. They then brought in Sam Darnold to, you know, compete with JJ, be the veteran, be a backup. JJ got hurt in preseason, and Darnold played, and played brilliantly, and they won 14 games, and then at the end of that year, 2024, they said, Sam Darnold, we appreciate you, but JJ McCarthy is our guy. We need to give ourselves the chance to have the most upside possible, so, we will be moving on from you, letting you, you know, you know, go. He obviously signs with Seattle, wins the Super Bowl, and JJ McCarthy takes over, and they are so quickly out of love with JJ McCarthy, and injuries obviously play a piece of it, that the next off season, they go out and say, Kyler Murray, who hasn't been good in a half decade, he is going to be the guy that changes our future at the position.