Grading the Kirk Cousins extension and three big Twins trades

Just a few days ago, I wrote about the relative lull in local sports news — and projected that big news would be coming soon.

But even I couldn't have predicted what happened over the weekend.

Patrick Reusse and I talked about the headline moves — Kirk Cousins' contract extension and the Twins' three trades — on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast.

But let's go a step further now and give the moves a grade that will stick with them forever, or at least until I change my mind:

While there is some good creativity on the financial side of the deal, the move itself is extremely underwhelming. Cousins has been in Minnesota for four seasons. With Aaron Rodgers back in Green Bay for the foreseeable future and the Vikings having numerous other roster holes, this seemed like the perfect time to trade Cousins and reset expectations to compete in 2023 and beyond.

Instead, new GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O'Connell arrived at a decision that maintains a mediocre status quo. The Vikings will be better in 2022 with Cousins than they would be without him, and they could be a fringe playoff team, but their ceiling with Cousins will never be high enough to win a Super Bowl.

If there really wasn't a trade market for Cousins, they should have just let him play this year at $45 million and walked away. Instead, they bought another year.

This was a no-brainer, especially with Gray under team control for two seasons.

Grade: B-plus.

Urshela is fine as a third baseman, but the Twins still don't have a shortstop now and they have both Sanchez (who has struggled mightily to make contact in recent years) and Ryan Jeffers (ditto) as catchers.

This is a head-scratcher unless there are more moves to come.

Grade: An incomplete that will turn into a D if more work isn't turned in.