Chris Simms Offers Mixed-Bag Endorsement of Kirk Cousins
Dustin Baker
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Few Vikings-related topics are as prevalent as “is Kirk Cousins really good or not.” It’s a strange conversation to engage with folks daily, chiefly because Cousins’ numbers speak for themselves. They are not made up.
Even so, about 10%-20% of Vikings fans assert that Cousins is not worth the large contract he commands, effectively implying that the 4,265 passing yards and 35 touchdowns he accrued in 2020 are not on par with Minnesota’s long-term needs. Only Cousins and Daunte Culpepper have tossed north of 4,200 yards and 35 touchdowns in a single season throughout Vikings history. Cousins did so during the pandemic season while Culpepper achieved the feat in 2004.
Nevertheless, the Cousins doubt — and often downright slander — transpires each day, sometimes on the hour. The most common critiques of Cousins include:
- He is dink-and-dunk passer
- His statistical prowess is derived from garbage time
- His team always goes 8-8
- He’s kind of a goof
- Justin Jefferson insulted him by praising Joe Burrow
- Not mobile enough
- Can’t put a team on his shoulders
- Needs everything to be absolutely perfect in order to win
- Makes too much money
- Crumbles in primetime games
Those are the biggies — and you can find them erroneously spread on the internet via Twitter on any given day.
Chris Simms, a former NFL quarterback turned NBC Sports analyst, has a reasonable opinion of Cousins. He’s currently ranking the NFL’s Top 40 signal-callers [at a snail’s pace] and reached the spot last weekend where Cousins resides.
He considers Cousins the 16th-best quarterback in the NFL for the upcoming season, but also said on his show, Unbuttoned Podcast, “You can win a Super Bowl with Kirk Cousins. You can.”
Sixteenth in the league is not congruent with the gigantic contract that Cousins possesses, but Simms did not have foul things to say about the Vikings quarterback. Simms has yet to reveal the totality of his Top 40 rankings. But so far, he perceives Cousins as better than Joe Burrow, Carson Wentz, Ben Roethlisberger, Jimmy Garoppolo, and Jared Goff.
Interestingly in the same batch of rankings, Simms considers Vikings rookie Kellen Mond a better 2021 option at quarterback than Trey Lance, Justin Fields, and Case Keenum. Whooda thunk it?
Back to Cousins, he is also the subject of chatter than spits something like “Cousins won’t take anybody to The Promised Land.'”
Simms disagrees.
And Simms is usually on point with quarterback-related matters. For instance, have a peek at his pre-draft rookie QB prognostications [rankings] as of late:
Source: Reddit.
Simms was also one of the — if not only — analysts to proclaim Patrick Mahomes as the top 2017 draft prospect at quarterback four years ago. He nailed that ranking and hasn’t really bungled any predictions since.
Cousins doesn’t inhabit a tier of elite quarterbacks, but very few Vikings loyalists correlate him as the same caliber of a passer as the aforementioned Mahomes or Russell Wilson. Instead, those that endorse Cousins tend to assert that he’s a borderline Top 10 commodity — even higher in some games. And every now and then, Cousins has awful games. It’s what stand him apart from the elite classifcation.
If the Vikings can find a method to jell a flippant Mike Zimmer-led defense with an offense akin to 2020’s and special teams that don’t ruin pivotal moments, perhaps Simms is on to something.