EAGAN — What’s different this year, Kirk?
Kirk Cousins has been asked this question over and over from lots of different angles. Is it the offense? Is it the coach? Are you leading differently? Are you taking more risks? Are you taking fewer risks? Are you using new hair products?
These are all ways of asking Cousins how he’s presently at the helm of an 8-1 team when his record coming into this season was 59-59-2.
Make no mistake, it’s fascinating. This quarterback has been defined by the gap between his statistics and win-loss record for his entire starting career. He’s the QB who was let go by Washington and then got the biggest contract in history and only reached the postseason once in four years. Now he’s leading the club atop the NFL mountain, following in the footsteps of Matthew Stafford, who went from the outhouse to the penthouse last year and won the Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Rams.
Because the tension between Cousins and Mike Zimmer was palpable in 2021, it’s natural to wonder whether Kevin O’Connell’s belief in him could be having a significant impact. He’s come up with a preposterous five game-winning drives in eight wins, which makes you wonder if confidence plays into it. And we’re coming off a game where heaving the ball in Justin Jefferson’s general direction paid dividends, so there’s reason to ask if the newfangled strategy is to fling it at the best player in the world.
But Cousins hasn’t been interested in playing ball with these narratives.
On Wednesday the veteran QB was asked if he’s more willing to huck the ball in Jefferson’s direction recently.
“I don’t think so,” Cousins said. “Sometimes it’s just what the situation calls for.”
After making some impressive plays in the heat of Buffalo and Washington’s pressure over the last two weeks, he was asked if he’s done anything to improve his pocket presence.
“I don’t think so,” Cousins said. “Sometimes good pocket movement can be instead of hitching directly forward, you hitch left or right subtly just to make a little more room in the pocket just between you and the block before you make the throw.”
He was asked if life is any different now that he’s leading a team that has a case for being the NFL’s best?
“To me this feels the same right here as it does every week,” Cousins said. “The team meeting felt the same, lunch felt the same, walk through feels the same. I go to my house, I play with my kids, I come back here and grind and it’s really boring back and forth.”
Certainly the veteran QB has never put on a bunch of chains after a win, but otherwise there isn’t a ton of evidence that Cousins is playing differently than years past.
His average PFF grade between 2015 and 2021 was 80.0, this year it’s 72.5. By Cousins’ adjusted yards per pass attempt, completion percentage, traditional rating and ESPN’s QBR, he’s been less efficient than in years past.
You might say that he hasn’t been playing from behind as often this year, which could be the cause of his stats being shaded differently. Well, that’s not the case. Remarkably, exactly the same percentage (44%) of Cousins’ pass attempts came when trailing in 2021 and 2022.
What about tossing footballs up for grabs? Not so much. He’s thrown 57 contested catch opportunities this year (16.1% of attempts) and had 94 total last season (16.7% of attempts).
How about under pressure? Cousins is sporting a 66.0 rating thus far in 2022. Last year: 72.5 rating.
Surely the Vikings’ passing attack has added more value than last year, right? Well, they currently rank 12th in Expected Points Added. Last year they were 10th.
How about clutch Kirk? This season he has 29 pass attempts when trailing with less than four minutes remaining in the game and has a 102.8 rating. Last year, 59 attempts, 97.3 rating.
While he indeed has five game-winning drives, a career high, this season has been illustrative about the strange nature of that statistic. Cousins needed his defense to make stops in the final moments against Detroit, New Orleans (via double-doink), Chicago, Arizona and Buffalo in order to get credit for game-winning drives. Last year in Detroit, Cousins punched in a late go-ahead touchdown, only to see his defense give up the game-winning drive to Jared Goff. Did Cousins play differently?
We have known for some time that he was capable of making big plays in key moments. In 2019 he delivered one of the best passes you’ll see to Adam Thielen to beat the New Orleans Saints in overtime in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.
Prior to 2022, Cousins was at the helm for 36 games separated by one score since joining the Vikings. They won 17, lost 18 and tied one. In Washington, he went 13-10-1 in one-score contests. That makes 54% of Cousins’ games since 2015 that are separated by one score. It stands to reason that stretches of good or bad results could extend longer than we’d expect, similar to flipping a coin. If you flip 5,000 times, the order won’t go heads, tails, heads, tails. There will be runs of each that make up the 50%.
That doesn’t mean the 2022 Vikings have to start losing one-score games this year. If they played 100 more games it would probably even out but this collection of players — not just the QB — might have a tendency to make late-game plays because there are so many stars i.e. Patrick Peterson, Justin Jefferson, Za’Darius Smith who are capable of special things.
That brings us to the supporting cast. Per PFF, only the Dolphins and Chiefs have gotten more value out of their non-QB players than the Vikings. They have the best receiver in the NFL, the highest PFF graded left tackle, they are the only team with two players in the top 10 in the NFL in pressures, Harrison Smith and Peterson have combined for seven interceptions and their special teams is No. 2 in average drive start.
The Vikings have also been healthy. Last year they lost Danielle Hunter and Everson Griffen within a span of a few weeks. Adam Thielen got banged up late in the year.
The schedule matters too. Since joining the Vikings, Cousins has smashed opponents who finished the season with losing records. Per Pro-Football Reference, Minnesota has gone 25-6-1 versus teams who ended the year below .500. In those contests, Cousins has thrown 68 touchdowns to 13 interceptions. So when the Vikings have played five teams with losing records, it’s hardly surprising that they would go 5-0 (and that’s not to mention playing backup QBs against Miami).
Cousins’ great win-loss year is hardly unique amongst QBs with similar career resumes. Ryan Tannehill won 12 games with an 89.8 rating last season, Andy Dalton had an 11-win year in 2013 with a 88.8 rating, 2005 Jake Plummer went 13-3 despite only throwing 18 touchdowns.
The recent past tells us that the convergence of events that has happened this year does not come together all the time. Last season was marred by close losses. The year before by injures. The 2018 season had close losses and issues with the offensive system.
The conversation about Cousins and the club’s inability to previously rise to their current heights always centered around cost. But this year the Vikings have received elite play from Darrisaw, Jefferson, Z. Smith and Peterson for the total cap cost of around $9.8 million. If they were all at the top of the market, they would cost $80 million-plus. The surplus value of these top performers is far greater than it has been for the Vikings in the past surrounding Cousins.
That’s rare. All of this is rare.
Things are ideal in 2022 and Cousins has done his job, putting the Vikings in position to be a Super Bowl contender. That’s how the team envisioned it going in 2018 when they signed him but there was always something in the way. That doesn’t mean Cousins is different as a player. It means his skills and circumstances have aligned for the Vikings to win week after week.
That said, the numbers would suggest he can get better as the year goes along. The addition of TJ Hockenson has already paid dividends over the past two weeks with key third and fourth down completions. He’s becoming more comfortable in Kevin O’Connell’s system and the team is galvanizing around him.
There’s also a long way to go. And Kirk isn’t planning on doing anything differently the rest of the way.
“This is year eight of starting week after week, you have your routine, you have your process and you just don’t deviate,” Cousins said. “When you lose you don’t deviate, when you win you don’t deviate. You just sort of methodically go about your process week in and week out and that’s what I’ll keep doing.”
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