If they could turn back time, would Kirk Cousins and Vikings still pick each other?

Kirk Cousins was a free agent about to enter his age-30 season, a rare quality quarterback who would it the open market during his prime. The Vikings were coming off an NFC title game trip thanks in part to a great but seemingly unsustainable season from backup QB Case Keenum.

The Vikings coveted stability and saw Cousins as the missing piece for a team with an open window to contend for a championship. Cousins wanted money, a chance to win and the feeling that he was wanted.

When Cousins and the Vikings picked each other on this day six years ago, with Cousins agreeing on March 13, 2018, to a three-year, fully guaranteed $84 million contract, it didn’t seem like a perfect match. But it felt like the best available match for each side -- one for which a practical person could make a much longer list of “pros” than “cons.”

Six years later, Cousins is gone. Atlanta is now the team showering him with money, a chance to win and the feeling that he is wanted. With the benefit of hindsight, this question is nagging at me: Knowing how the last six years played out, would the Vikings and Cousins pick each other if they had to do it all over again?

Chip Scoggins and I talked about that on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast.

Of course the hindsight game is dangerous to play in real life or even sports. All you can do is make the best decision at the time.

That said, former Vikings coach Mike Zimmer offered foresight on the decision. At the 2018 NFL scouting combine, days before the Vikings and Cousins joined forces, Zimmer understood that spending big on a QB like Cousins would eventually impact the Vikings’ ability to spend on other areas -- particularly on a defense that was, at the time, their primary identity.

“I want to be really careful about taking away from our strength and saying, ‘OK, we’re not going to be able to do this and we’re not going to be able to do that anymore because of financial reasons or something else,’” Zimmer said at the time. In that same famous session, he foreshadowed his own future: “It’s important for myself and Rick [Spielman] and the organization that we pick the right guy that is going to help us to continue to move forward. If we don’t do that, then I’ll probably get fired.”

Zimmer and Spielman were fired after the 2021 season, with just one playoff appearance in four years with Cousins at that point.

One could argue that signing Cousins hastened the demise of a roster built around defense. But maybe that would have happened anyway as the defense aged and Spielman’s subsequent drafts produced fewer hits.

Would the Vikings have been better off doing a cheaper, shorter deal with Keenum, who signed a two-year, $36 million deal ($25 million guaranteed) with Denver? Or putting their faith in Teddy Bridgewater two years after his knee injury? Or rolling the dice in the draft, where they could have selected Lamar Jackson at No. 30 in 2018?

Would Cousins have been better off taking the Jets’ reported offer of three years and $90 million? The Jets were coming off back-to-back 5-11 seasons and still haven’t had a winning season since 2015.

The Vikings ended up making the playoffs twice, with one playoff victory, in Cousins’ six seasons. It wouldn’t have been hard to match that with even a serviceable QB like Bridgewater or Keenum, and they surely would have exceeded it had they also drafted Jackson. It’s not hard to imagine the Vikings (and especially Zimmer) wishing for a do-over.

That said, maintaining a baseline level of competency wasn’t the goal in 2018. The goal was a Super Bowl, and higher-level QB play often is a key ingredient.

Cousins almost certainly made the right choice signing with the Vikings. He would have been even more scrutinized and likely miserable with the Jets, who would have floundered even with an upgrade at quarterback.

In the end, there is only one reality. That the last six years feel more like an era of ambivalence than dominance doesn’t necessarily mean the Vikings or Cousins chose poorly, even if I imagine the team has more regrets than the player.

It ultimately just means that neither side has much to show for their best laid plans, except for the $185 million that changed hands from the Vikings to Cousins.