Image courtesy of Vikings.com
I can already hear the cacophony of keyboards being angrily typed on from around the state of Minnesota.
One thing that has increasingly struck me as interesting is the fact that the Minnesota Vikings faithful are somehow bending over backward to explain away the one thing we’ve always wanted, a sub-40 (ish) franchise quarterback.
I’ve covered that topic to a point of concern by those around me, but one tidbit that I feel is something I haven’t pointed out and that most Kirk Cousins couldn’t (or more so shouldn’t) respond to (as I’m aware that they will explain this away with their favorite (incorrect) narrative, Cousins in garbage time) is as follows.
First, let’s get that garbage time narrative out of the way.
Now, the tidbit.
Russell Wilson has long been considered a top three quarterback in the NFL. While that’s been the case for nearly a decade, it was 2020 that many considered to be his (regular season) magnum opus.
While he had a better statistical start of his season than how things ended, he was thought of as the main opponent of Aaron Rodgers for the MVP race. So. What does he have to do with Cousins or the Vikings?
This…
That’s right.
Your eyes don’t deceive you.
Kirk Cousins and Russell Wilson had incredibly similar statistical seasons. I brought this fact up on our weekly KDLM Sports radio show, The VikingsTerritory Breakdown, last night and both Joe Oberle and Tim McNiff said the difference was the wins and losses (and the garbage time thing).
We’ve already established the fact that the garbage time stat is a much a non-starter as the prime time games narrative (as Cousins has performed BETTER in prime time games). What’s left is that a quarterback is also not responsible for defense or special teams.
Oberle and McNiff pointed out the 2019 Vikings / Seahawks game in which Wilson lead the Seahawks on a game winning drive, to which I replied/questioned whether or not they were actually blaming the Vikings defense and it’s inability to stop Wilson on Cousins.
The larger point or distinction they were trying to make is that Cousins isn’t a winner. My argument is that Wilson wants out of Seattle because he’s been sacked more than any quarterback ever through nine seasons.
Yet, the Seahawks offensive line ranked in the mid-Teens in 2020 as compared to the Vikings’ high 20’s pass blocking unit. So, Wilson had more time and is considered to be elite and is coming off of his best season yet… But Cousins with more yards, five less touchdowns, the same number of interceptions and near the same QB-rating but is an overpaid hack?
But somehow he’s also not a winner despite the fact that the two seasons the Vikings haven’t made the playoffs were on the defense and special teams, not Cousins?
He doesn’t put the team on his shoulder, or win when it matters most? Even though you could much more easily make that determination about the Zimmer era Vikings defense (yet many of you angrily comment whenever I say that the Vikings won’t win until Zimmer is gone)?
Is Cousins as good or better than Wilson? No. But they’re the 1A and 1B in terms of play-action passing in the league, and my argument is that Cousins is close enough to have earned the respect of a fan base that is under a decade removed from the named Christian Ponder, Matt Cassel, Teddy Bridgewater, Josh Freeman, Donovan McNabb, etc.
View Comments
Cousins is much better than a lot of people want to give him credit for being. I just think that they are closed minded fools.
5 less touchdowns is alot
Well, Vikes has 5 more rushing tds so if those were passing tds it would be the same.
Exactly. You've nailed it.
The Kirk-Haters fall into 3 categories:
If the national narrative about cousins was different, Vikings fans would be heaping praise on cousins. But since we just pay attention to what the national talking heads say (you know , the ones that don't actually watch Vikings games) this is what we get.
I'm not a Cousins hater by any means. But for Cousins, it comes down to game situations. He takes sacks, fumbles, and throws picks at the worst times in the football games. Wilson does not. Another thing to consider is that Wilson is also an adept scrambler and rusher.
2020 Rushing stats: 63 attempts, 513 yds. 2 TDs. 6 total fumbles. 2 lost.
2020 Cousins. 32 attempts, 151 yards. 1 TD. 9 total fumbles. 8 of them as a passer.
I do think that Cousins is an elite passer when given time, but when things break down, he has a history of making some bad decisions, throwing picks, taking sacks, and fumbling.
To compare the two quarterbacks is asinine. They have different skills sets.
While I am generally in sympathy with this argument, let's not forget that a combination of turnovers and poor play on Cousins' part can be blamed for playing a significant role in at least one or two losses each of the last three years:
In 2018, a INT returned for a TD was the margin of victory in one game against the Bears. In 2019, Cousins played horribly in both games against the Packers, winnable games in which the Pack could only manage 21 and 23 points, respectively. In 2020, Cousins played the worst game of his career against the Colts, and a similar first half against the Falcons resulted in 17 points, the margin of victory, being scored (yes, against our defense, so it's partly responsible) after three Cousins' INT's.
In analyzing some of the other losses in games in which Cousins was not at his best, I've tried to account for factors such as our opponents' pass rush, their ability to run the ball down the throat of our defense or utterly contain our own running game, and John DeFilippo's horrendous pass-happy play calling in 2018.
Perhaps one can identify one to two losses per year that can be laid on the shoulders of any NFL QB, even the elite ones, which Cousins isn't, but some QB's are just better able to make up for such losses by, as the cliche goes, putting a team on their back and getting them the win at a better rate than Cousins does. For instance, Matthew Stafford, a QB often compared to Cousins and with a similar history of playing on mostly mediocre teams, has a much better rate of 4th quarter comebacks and game-winning drives than Kirk, 23.6% (39 of 165 regular season games) vs. 16.5% (18 of 109). On the other hand, since his Super Bowl victory, Joe Flacco has only led his often mediocre teams to 4QCB/GWD victories 11.5% of the time, and in the same period, 2013-2020, helming teams that ran the gamut from bad to Super Bowl participant, Matt Ryan's 4QCB/GWD rate has been only 14.2%. Meanwhile, Drew Brees, with a lot more contending teams than Cousins has ever played on, only has a career 4QCB/GWD rate of 18.8%, not that much higher than Kirk's 16.5%. And Tom Brady's regular season rate of 16.3% is actually lower than Cousins, though Brady almost doubles the rate in the playoffs to 31.1%, where both Cousins and Wilson are at 25% for their playoff appearances. Wilson's career rate of 22.2% is far enough better than Cousins that I think he's better than Brees and Brady in the regular season, if not in Stafford's class. As odd as it sounds saying that guys like Brady, Brees and Wilson are not in Matt Stafford's class outside of pure arm talent (regular season only, remember), this does make one think that Stafford's record in 4th Quarter comebacks and game winning drives was a major factor in the bidding war over him this off-season.
What does that brick of a last paragraph tell me? That Cousins may not be the "clutch" QB that a Stafford or a Wilson is, but he might actually be pretty close to Brees and, during the regular season, at least, Brady. Hmm. I have to admit that this makes me feel better about Captain Kirk, it really does.