Misinformation about Kirk Cousins' contract demands runs rampant on social media
Kirk Cousins is looking to get $45 million guaranteed annually in his next contract, said no one ever. But that hasn't stopped popular Twitter posters from passing on the erroneous information a humongous scale.
It happens all the time regardless of subject matter, be it fear-mongering weather forecasts, politics and sports, but on Monday a harmless paragraph in Charley Walters' column at the St. Paul Pioneer Press was digested and then re-shared as misinformation when multiple posters failed to convey what Walters actually wrote.
"The buzz now is that it will take $90 million guaranteed for two years, despite that he’s still not yet fully recovered from Achilles surgery in November, to sign free agent QB Kirk Cousins," Walters wrote. "If that’s the case, he certainly won’t get that from the Vikings."
Posters ran wild with it, screaming from the digital mountaintop that Cousins wants $45 million guaranteed. All Walters wrote was that there is "buzz," and we have a pretty good idea where that buzz came from – and it's definitely not an official report.
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins (8) talks with teammates prior to their game against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field in Detroit on Jan. 7, 2024.
Lon Horwedel / USA TODAY Sports
Do a little digging and you'll find that former Vikings general manager Jeff Diamond included a brief nugget about what he thinks Cousins will look to get paid. Diamond, in a piece for The 33rd Team, predicts that Cousins "will seek at least $45 million per year after his productive first eight games in 2023."
Diamond is not a reporter. He's a former GM who knows football inside and out. He very well could be correct that Cousins is hoping to get that kind of money, but his note about the QB was buried deep within an article in which Diamond was predicting what Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson's next contract will look like. He's making predictions, not reporting.
That didn't stop user @_MLFootball, which has more than 150,000 followers, from posting this: "REPORT: Impending free agent veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins plans to ask for 45 MILLION DOLLARS a year, fully guaranteed, per the [Pioneer Press]."
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Five minutes later – like, literally five minutes later – another big NFL account on Twitter/X known as "Dov Kleiman" ran wild with it, writing to more than 260,000 followers: "Report: [Vikings] QB Kirk Cousins is looking for $90 million guaranteed ($45M AAV) for 2 years to [re-sign] with the team, per [Charley Walters]."
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This is all based off a former GM's prediction, and not from any official sources or even from a well-placed football insider a la Ian Rapoport or Adam Schefter.
Walters literally followed his line about the "buzz" with the words "if that's the case," which is a rather large clue that he has no idea if the "buzz" is true or not.
Cousins is certainly going to be a coveted free agent this spring. He'll easily be the best QB to hit the market and that $45m/year number, on the surface, makes plenty of sense, which is why Diamond wrote about it in his prediction piece in the first place.
But just remember that this is silly season in the NFL, with speculation rife about pending free agents, particularly ones as high profile as Cousins. Take everything you see with a pinch of salt until more reliable sources report.
