With the Raiders trading him to the Vikings, Kirk Cousins has an opportunity to do something no quarterback has done before: Play 18 games in a single regular season.

Cousins has already started nine games this season for the Raiders, who have not had their bye. He’s now joining the Vikings, who have nine games left on their schedule because they have already had their bye. If Cousins plays every game the rest of the season, he’ll have played 18 regular-season games.

Since the NFL expanded the regular season to 17 games over 18 weeks in 2021, four players have played 18 games in a regular season because they moved from a team that hadn’t had its bye to a team that had: Rashid Shaheed and Dre’Mont Jones in 2025, Mike Williams in 2024 and Leonard Williams in 2023.

The NFL record for games in a season is actually 19, set by four members of the Frankford Yellow Jackets, a team that routinely played more games than other NFL teams in the 1920s. But in the modern era, 18 games has been the most a player could conceivably pay, and Cousins, as a starting quarterback, may become the most noteworthy player to do it.