Never let it be said that Cousins isn’t thinking about his fellow man. Minnesota’s new quarterback might have attempted to set a new precedent for top-tier players by planning to sign a three-year, $84 million deal that is fully guaranteed, the first top-tier,authentic nfl jerseys cheap multiyear contract to be fully guaranteed in recent memory. If the league ends up moving to a structure in which players get smaller, more lucrative deals, we’ll look back on Cousins as a trailblazer.

It’s certainly a surprise given that Cousins’ issue in Washington was that the organization never wanted to commit to him on a long-term contract. When he had the opportunity to sign a five- or six-year offer, Cousins instead took a shorter-term deal that will have him either negotiating a new extension with the Vikings after the 2019 season or hitting free agency after the 2020 campaign. He also didn’t move the average annual salary needle significantly forward, given that his deal won’t reach $30 million per year. At $28 million per year, Cousins’ deal will narrowly top Jimmy Garoppolo’s per-year average ($27.5 million), although both Garoppolo and Matthew Stafford will make more over the first three years of their new pacts.

Curiously, though, veteran quarterbacks with significant leverage like Cousins have less to gain from fully guaranteed short-term deals than players at just about any other position. He could have called his shot in free agency, signed with the Vikings, and come away with something like a five-year, $150 million deal with $80 million in guarantees. Cousins’ representation could have structured the deal in such a way to virtually ensure that he saw at least four years of that money, given that top-tier quarterbacks almost always make it to the next-to-last year in their deal. The Vikings wouldn’t have blinked.

It’s fair to say that most free-agent contracts are really one- or two-year deals with various team options tacked on the end, and that the Cousins contract is about sacrificing money to wipe away those unguaranteed team options at the end of the deal. It will be difficult for other players to follow this path,nfl jerseys for cheap if only because they don’t have the sort of leverage Cousins did. The pocket quarterback attrition rate and career path makes it far friendlier to go year-to-year, as Cousins did, than it is at other positions.