Once upon a time, the Jets offered Kirk Cousins $90 million guaranteed. He turned them down to sign with the Minnesota Vikings for less money, though, and so the Jets ended up drafting Sam Darnold 29 days later.

What looked like a slight from Cousins at the time now appears to be a stroke a pure luck with the quarterback 20 games into his career in Minnesota.

Cousins failed to lead the Vikings to the playoffs in 2018, a year after they made the NFC Championship with Case Keenum under center, and now he’s turning out career-lows in completions (64), completion percentage (64 percent), passing yards (735) and passing touchdowns (three) through the first four games of the 2019 season. With Cousins at the helm, the Vikings rank 30th in passing yards and passing first-downs and 29th in passing touchdowns and completions. The Vikings sit at 2-2 and are last in the NFC North.

Looking at those numbers, you would think Cousins was working with a bunch of scrubs on offense. Instead, he’s putting up those numbers with arguably the best wide receiver duo in the league in Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen, as well as a top-10 running back in Dalvin Cook.

If Cousins can’t get it done with those weapons, imagine how’d he play with the Jets’ skill position players. Spoiler alert: It wouldn’t be pretty.

Besides the obvious statistical disappointments, Cousins is simply not making the Vikings offense better with his play. He’s made major mistakes that have cost the Vikings both their losses in 2019, including missing a wide-open Adam Theilen downfield with a clean pocket against the Bears in Week 4 and throwing a late-game interception in the end zone to seal a Week 2 loss to the Packers.

Highly-paid veteran quarterbacks don’t make those mistakes, but Cousins seems to do it a lot, especially against quality teams.

Despite great stats in his first year with the Vikings – 4,298 passing yards and 30 touchdowns – Cousins wilted in big games in 2018. He went 1-6 against teams with a winning record last season and is 5-27 for his career. The Vikings paid (and the Jets wanted to pay) Cousins to be a winner. Less than two years into his contract, he has proven that he’s not.

The Jets aren’t fairing much better with Darnold leading the charge, but the second-year quarterback also only costs them a third of what they would have paid Cousins. Darnold is also nine years younger than Cousins with plenty of room to develop. Ironically, Darnold has only six fewer wins than Cousins does since 2018 in seven fewer games. Not an impressive difference by any means, but certainly a cheaper one.

Darnold isn’t a franchise-altering quarterback yet, but he is a promising young player on a rookie contract that gives the Jets flexibility to make the necessary moves to turn the team around. Granted, the front office hasn’t done much with that cap flexibility, but they at least had the opportunity to bring in players like Le’Veon Bell and Jamison Crowder this past offseason to help the offense. If the Jets were strapped with Cousins’ astronomical cap hits ($24 million in 2018, $29 million in 2019 and $31 million in 2020), they would have a decimated roster with an average quarterback leading the way.

Sometimes, the best deal is the one you don’t make. That certainly applies to the Jets and Cousins, and it’s probably what the Vikings wish they had done before handing the QB all that money.