Kirk Cousins Traded To Vikings: Who’s The Biggest Winner, The Vikings, The Fans Or Fernando Mendoza?

by Robert BluteNovember 12, 2026, 2:51 pm >

The Minnesota Vikings watched Carson Wentz play one of the worst quarterbacked games in recent memory on Monday Night Football, losing 23-6 to the Buffalo Bills, then rushed to the trade block to solve their problem before the trade deadline.

The Vikings acquired Kirk Cousins from the Las Vegas Raiders, who will bring him back to Minnesota in exchange for a 2027 third-round draft pick.

Cousins, who has had a great year at 38, is more than serviceable and exactly what the Vikings need to be a Super Bowl contender with their elite defense and wide receiver core. He is fifth in passing yards this season and second in touchdowns thrown.

All this begs the question of how anyone else could be a bigger winner than the Vikings in this trade, but it is certainly a conversation.

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This is an amazing trade for NFL fans and the sport itself. It makes both teams much more interesting than before and creates many more storylines for the back half of the regular season.

The Vikings become a Super Bowl contender, and fans won’t have to watch what happened on Monday again. The Raiders, who sit at 4-5, might not have Super Bowl aspirations, but hardly did with Cousins anyway, who was brought in to serve as a mentor this year for number one overall pick and Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza.

Now, fans will get their first look at Mendoza as an NFL starter, preseason excluded. After the trade, Mendoza was immediately named the starter by Las Vegas and jumped from 20-to-one odds all the way up to four-to-one and became the favorite to win rookie of the year.

Mendoza now has a chance to prove himself, making him a winner in all of this. If he can somehow get the Raiders, who have tailed off recently since their 0-3 start, to the playoffs, he will create hope that hasn’t existed in Las Vegas in a very long time.

If there is a loser in this trade, it would be the Raiders, who could have probably used the Vikings quarterback’s desperation and connection to Cousins as leverage to get a second-rounder instead of the third-rounder. Regardless, this is the worst aspect of the trade overall; in the end, it’s a good trade for both.

Cousins, a veteran who has paid his dues in the NFL and with Minnesota, is absolutely deserving of the chance to cash in at the tail end of his career with a solid team around him, which he hasn’t had the luxury of in the majority of his NFL career.

For Las Vegas, the future is here now, and the fans are ready for it. Raiders fans should be excited about this trade, even with just the third-rounder in return, because Cousins wasn’t taking this team to the Super Bowl. He absolutely could in Minnesota, and the present is now for Vikings fans.