The Jets will pay “whatever it takes” to get quarterback Kirk Cousins. Unless they won’t.
Amid multiple reports suggesting that the Jets will be taking the Carmen Policy approach to negotiations with Kirk Cousins, Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News reports that the Jets “aren’t going to to hand Cousins a blank check.” Putting it another way, Mehta writes that the Jets “are not going to try to bring [Cousins] aboard by any means necessary.”
That said, the Jets still want Cousins, and they’ll try to get him. But they won’t go crazy financially in an effort to get him.
A five-year, $150 million contract isn’t out of line, however, given that 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo has gotten $137.5 million over five years. Cousins would become the first $30 million-per-year quarterback; given increases in the salary cap over the last five years, the market should have surpassed $30 million per year by now.
Soon, it will.