An Apology to Kirk Cousins
This first NFL season at purpleTERRITORY Media has been an awesome experience. Learning how to improve as a writer, expand my boundaries as a creator, and block out comments suggesting I pursue an alternate career has been an invaluable experience. However, this is not meant to be me reflecting on these past few months. Instead, I want to talk about how my viewpoints on one specific player have evolved.
Before this, I was an outsider looking in who admittedly didn’t watch that much of the Vikings unless they were on a primetime stage. A couple reasons for this were that I was a Saints fan living in Idaho, so 1) they weren’t shown in my area that often and 2) I spent more Sundays watching New Orleans than Minnesota.
If you asked me last season at this time who the overrated quarterbacks were, Kirk Cousins would be among the top of the list. I would look at his underwhelming records in Washington and seemingly lackluster moments in big games, and his high completion rates and touchdown/interception ratios seemed not to tell the true story.
When I first started here at PTM back in August, I heard Joe Johnson and Kirby O’Connor defend Cousins to no end and couldn’t understand it. How good can a QB with a .500 career record possibly be? Well, it turns out that he can actually be pretty damn good.
How can this happen? How can a good quarterback be accused of being bad and attributed to losing for so long? Well, here’s a few things that Cousins can’t control that have also contributed to unimpressive results.
Below Average Defense
As much as we like to put losses on quarterbacks, football is obviously a team sport. Quarterbacks can’t guard opposing wide receivers, just like cornerbacks can’t lead a team to the endzone. As difficult as it is to fully assess a defense year-to-year, I’d say that going off how many points they allow goes a long way. Here are where Cousins’ defenses ranked in terms of points allowed since 2015, and the team’s record at the end of the year.
2015: 17th (9-7)
2016: 19th (8-7-1)
2017: 27th (7-9)
2018: 9th (8-7-1)
2019: 6th (10-6)
2020 (so far): 22nd (6-8)
I think it’s safe to say that outside of his first two Vikings seasons, Cousins has never really had a great defense to rely on week to week. The only anomaly that stands out is the 2018 season where Minnesota missed the playoffs despite having a top ten defense. That said, looking back on that season, there was one area where this Vikings team struggled defensively.
Per Pro-Football-Reference, Minnesota opponents averaged two minutes 45 seconds per drive. That ranked just 20th in the league. They also ranked just 19th in turnover percentage, so Cousins wasn’t getting many extra opportunities to lead the offense. It doesn’t matter how good a quarterback you are, if you don’t have the ball as often as others, it’s going to be harder to win games. It also makes it harder that when you have the ball, teams can see passes coming.
Lack of a Running Game
A running threat to complement the pass makes it much harder for a defense to do their job. Kirk Cousins has not had that luxury for much of his career. To start off, here is how Cousins’ teams have done in terms of yard per rush.
2015: 29th
2016: 8th
2017: 29th
2018: 23rd
2019: 11th
2020 (so far): 6th
To no surprise, this is the best run game Cousins has ever had. However, Vikings fans know that this defense is nothing to write home about, and they have consistently let opponents run up the score. 2016 is also a notable year, but there’s a difference. While Washington had success when they ran the ball, they just didn’t do it much. They ranked 27th in rush attempts.
The lack of success from the 2018 Vikings makes a little more sense too. Not only did they find little success from the ground, but they also were in the bottom five in rushing yards and touchdowns. Again, hard to really have a ton of success when defenses know what’s coming.
The Comp
Look, I’m not here to tell you that we should be worshiping the ground that Cousins walks on. He absolutely has not been as good as guys like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, and Patrick Mahomes. That said, he DOES belong in that next tier of quarterbacks. While not perennial title contenders, he gets the job done.
There is plenty of proof that he belongs in the conversation with guys that while not truly elite, they are always threats to win games no matter what the team around them looks like. When you think of guys that have had to perform even with the walls falling down around them, Philip Rivers and Matt Ryan probably come to mind, right?
Well, here are the numbers. You decide for yourself whether or not Kirk Cousins has been as good if not better than these guys and let me know in the comments what your conclusion is.
Sure, Kirk Cousins at $33 million and $45 million is a steep overpay for a good quarterback. That said, since the bye, Kirk Cousins has not been just a good quarterback. He’s been a great quarterback. It makes sense, given that the running game with Dalvin Cook has been awesome, and the defense has sometimes stepped up to force stops and turnovers. In these eight games since the bye, Cousins has 1994 passing yards, 18 touchdowns, and three interceptions. Well, only two interceptions if you take out that hail mary from yesterday.
The beginning of this season was bad; there’s no getting around it. However, that’s the anomaly. Throughout his career, Cousins has not been a high turnover, low accuracy kind of player. I think the loss of key defensive players and his number two receiver, Stefon Diggs, had him pressing for those first six games.
Since then, he’s corrected his mistakes, and the only quarterbacks that can exceed his production and efficiency are Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes, two generational quarterbacks that you don’t always just happen to find in free agency or the draft. This is the Kirk Cousins you get when things are going right around him. This is the Kirk Cousins that Vikings fans should expect for the next two years.
