Fourth and eight is pretty well trodden territory for Vikings fans. You know, that moment frozen in time when Kirk Cousins threw short of the sticks to tight end T.J. Hockenson with the season on the line. Yeah, that one.
It’s been nearly four months since the Vikings lost to the Giants in the first round of the NFL playoffs and Cousins’s decision is still being dissected by the outside world. The latest to put the play under the microscope is ex-Vikings quarterback J.T. O’Sullivan.
“This, essentially, checkdown throw to the tight end is just… it can’t happen,” said O’Sullivan on his QB School YouTube channel where he analyzes the entire game between the Vikings and Giants.
(You can watch the full game analysis below. The breakdown of the 4th-and-8 play starts around the 32:00 minute mark.)
“It’s either a design flaw or a Cousins flaw,” continued O’Sullivan. “It’s probably both, if I’m being honest.”
Diving further into the play design and where Cousins ended up throwing the ball, O’Sullivan said: “That’s how you really piss off a fanbase. It’s just, like, double middle fingering the opportunity to get a first down.”
“He’s just so quick to the checkdown. It never has a chance,” he continued, noting that KJ Osborn and Adam Thielen were separating from their defenders when Cousins decided to throw short. “I can’t throw that far under the sticks on fourth down and the season on the line. It’s a bizarre decision.”
He also criticized Vikings center Garrett Bradbury for leaving the double team block with left guard Ezra Cleveland against Dexter Lawrence, which led to Lawrence blowing through Cleveland and putting significant pressure on Cousins to the point that Cousins threw short to Hockenson.
O’Sullivan, who played for the Vikings and was a third-string quarterback in 2005, was also critical of Cousins’s pass that fell incomplete to Osborn the play before, calling Cousins’s pass a “bad ball” while also saying KJ Osborn’s route was “underwhelming” and didn’t create enough separation from the defender.
“I thought [Cousins] was playing pretty well early on. I felt for the most part a lot of the play-calling design was pretty outstanding,” O’Sullivan concluded. “There were certainly some missed opportunities… but the way that that thing ends it just leaves such a bad taste in your mouth.”
