Peyton Manning Is Impressed with You Know Who
Janik Eckardt
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Whenever Peyton Manning talks, especially about football, folks listen. He retired with every significant passing record and was an elite player for more than a decade. What makes his words even more noteworthy is that he didn’t possess any outstanding physical tools but was always the smartest player on the field.
That package is clearly advantageous when he is analyzing football. The Hall of Famer passed for 71,940 yards and 539 touchdowns in his career in the regular season only. He is also a two-time Super Bowl champion and a five-time MVP. It’s hard to find anyone more accomplished than the legendary quarterback.
Manning lived for two years in Minnesota as a kid and certainly rooted for the Vikings, as his father Archie played his final two career seasons for the purple team. He only started two games and scored twice in those games as the backup for Tommy Kramer and Wade Wilson.
Kirk Cousins and Peyton Manning once shared a football field in their careers. In 2013, Cousins was the backup for Robert Griffin III and had to replace the starter late in the game after another knee injury. The backup had two of his nine attempts intercepted, and the Broncos cruised to a blowout win.
Fast forward nine years, Cousins is in his 11th NFL season, while Manning retired almost seven years ago. The now veteran passer is the quarterback of a current 10-2 Vikings team, and in Manning’s opinion, he’s a big reason for the success.
I’m proud of Kirk. Kirk is having a great year. I’ve always enjoyed keeping up with Kirk and, boy, he’s playing well. Kirk has always made a lot of aggressive throws, likes to throw it down the field, likes to be aggressive on play-action, and he’s getting the ball to his playmakers.
Peyton Manning, about Kirk Cousins
The Vikings quarterback is always a hot topic in debates around the local media and among fans. All the arguments can be simplified – Some people like Cousins, and others don’t. Curiously, people that didn’t like him in the past — praise him this year, while Cousins fans are seeing a regression.
He’s certainly making more mistakes than last season and has thrown for more interceptions already. However, some people believe that those mistakes are happening because of more aggressiveness in his throws. The objective numbers suggest a much worse season. After his 2021 campaign, Cousins ranked around the 10th best quarterback in the NFL in various statistics, some more and some less analytical. In 2022, meanwhile, Cousins is about the 20th-best quarterback.
Some of his plays are not represented in the numbers, for example, his high-level play in the important fourth quarters of the games. Cousins is credited with six fourth-quarter comebacks, a statistic that should be a team and not an individual number, but it shows the level of play in high-leverage situations. Per EPA/Play, Cousins is near the bottom of the league in the first three quarters but near the top in the fourth quarter and overtime.
His teammates seem to embrace him as a leader more than in prior years, which led to some hilarious content that involved the patented ‘You Like That?’ chant and a lot of chains. The good chemistry in the locker room is undoubtedly playing a part in the franchise’s turnaround.
Manning faced the Vikings only four times in his career because he played in the AFC for the Colts and the Broncos. He won all four matchups and scored ten touchdowns with five interceptions. His passer rating was 101.4 in those games.
The Vikings and Cousins will have a favorable matchup on Sunday. Dan Campbell’s Lions are one of the worst passing defenses in the league. That could be the start of a late-season surge for the veteran passer. Fans hope he would get hot late in the season, just in time for the playoffs.
Janik Eckardt is a football fan who likes numbers and stats. The Vikings became his favorite team despite their quarterback at the time, Christian Ponder. He is a walking soccer encyclopedia, loves watching sitcoms, and Classic rock is his music genre of choice. Follow him on Twitter if you like the Vikings: @JanikEckardt
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