For years football players have risked their health for contracts with very little guaranteed money. The Minnesota Vikings quarterback may have changed that

Who knows if Kirk Cousins will take the Minnesota Vikings to the Super Bowl.

There has always lingered a question about how good he really is, suggestions that the fabulous passing yards piled up in Washington were a mirage and that he lacks that special instinct buried inside a Tom Brady or Drew Brees to make their teams contenders. Washington reportedly criticized Cousins to potential free agent suitors. But given the dysfunction of that organization, the fact he has started only one playoff game might be more a function of his old franchise than his failings as a player.

The three-year, $84m contract he will sign with Minnesota is most noteworthy not for its size but because it is fully guaranteed. This is a rarity in the NFL where gaudy player contracts are worthless beyond the signing bonus. Life in the world’s most-lucrative sports league is literally day-to-day. Players – no matter how talented – find themselves wondering if each day will be their last in the NFL.

Their deals sound spectacular, heavy on zeros and commas, but they are light on certainty. Players who give away their future health as well as any ability to walk through retirement without a Frankenstein lurch have long complained about the lack of guaranteed contracts in football. It hardly seemed fair they were shaving years off life expectancy while their counterparts in baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer earned mounds of money regardless of results.

But that’s how things had been and football players had come to accept exploitation.

“You’re never going to get guaranteed contracts in a contact league,” one team’s union representative told me several years ago.

The player, who was speaking on the condition of anonymity since he was in union leadership, seemed almost defiant as he said this, as if there was a pride in playing without guarantees while his team’s owner watched the franchise’s value skyrocket into the billions of dollars. For decades, this was the way football players had been conditioned to think. They accepted the flimsy terms of their contracts and kept their mouths shut lest their frustration made them radioactive and thus even more disposable.

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In recent years, though, players have acquired a voice. NFL franchises have become so valuable that the best players are more essential than ever. Guarantees, especially for quarterbacks, have gotten bigger as contracts have mushroomed. Cousins’s sure money isn’t even the largest in the NFL. More than $90m of Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford’s $135m deal is guaranteed. Andrew Luck’s guarantee on a $122m contract is $87m.

Cousins probably could have landed bigger contracts with the New York Jets or Arizona Cardinals, deals that averaged more money over more years, but he took a shorter, less-lucrative offer that gave a full guarantee (the fact that Minnesota are one of the best team’s in the league helped too). It was a decision that made a significant ripple in player circles, with Seattle Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin calling him “a hero for all the young players that will follow after him.”

Baldwin went on to add: “Now we need more young players to bet on themselves until fully-guaranteed contracts are the norm and not the exception.”

NFL players have never strongarmed owners in negotiations the way baseball, basketball and hockey players have done. Their strikes haven’t lasted long enough to have an impact. The players have almost always caved. The NFL Players Association learned years ago their victories would need to come in court not in collective bargaining.

In the end, Cousins probably took the best deal for himself. He has always played with a chip on his shoulder, transforming himself from a fourth-round draft pick designated to be Robert Griffin III’s understudy into a player who will have made $130m when his Vikings contract ends. Few NFL players have bet on themselves and won as big as Cousins.

Cousins has never seemed like a rebel, even with his occasional outbursts directed toward the doubters. His fully-guaranteed contract might not change football but it could still become a call to other players in future off-seasons. Cousins may not have a lot in common with Colin Kaepernick, whose stand against racial injustice looks to have cost him his career. And yet Cousins’s Vikings deal is a small, significant step for football players; a message they don’t have to accept their lot.

Doug Baldwin is right. Eventually more players will bet on themselves, asking for contracts that are fully guaranteed. After years of nodding yes, the NFL’s players have found they can take stands. Someday they might look back at Kirk Cousins in a Vikings helmet and say he started something big. Super Bowl or not.