2020 Vikings Expectations

Consistent Kirk

When the Vikings signed Cousins to a three-year, $84 million contract in 2019, they only had a three year sample size from which to draw conclusions. And those first three seasons of Cousins’s career as a full-time starter had been a roller coaster, from his breakout in 2015 to operating a top-ranked offense in 2016 to sliding back significantly with a fading roster in 2017.

Along the way there were high moments (his famous “You Like That” comeback, for instance) and disappointments at the worst possible times, like when the Packers came back from down double digits to beat Washington in the playoffs and in ‘16 he produced just 10 points against the Giants in Week 17 to be eliminated from postseason contention.

Now that we have five years of Cousins, we have a better sense for his ceiling and floor and we know that the Kirk Coaster is a feature not a bug.

Think of the highs and lows he’s provided. In Cousins’s second game as a Viking, he threw for 425 yards and four touchdowns and led a game-winning drive that was undone by kicker Daniel Carlson. He followed that performance by scoring six points against the Buffalo Bills at home.

Later in 2018 he shredded the Packers again for three touchdowns and 329 yards in a win that put the Vikings on track for the playoffs and then combined for 409 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions the following two weeks against New England and Seattle. And then he repeated the measure by shredding Miami and Detroit before no-showing in the memorable Adam Thielen-yelled-at-him game against Detroit.

While 2019 was a much better overall season, Cousins opened the year in abysmal fashion and then won Player of the Month in October. He led a brilliant game-winning drive in the playoffs against the Saints and then threw for 122 yards against the 49ers.

You’d be fooling yourself to expect anything but some very high highs and very low lows. That’s probably the best explanation as to why his team still won seven games in his worst season and his team only won 10 in his best season.

There’s also the act that there are more highs than lows overall with Cousins.

His average season since 2015 looks like this:

- 4,269 yards, 28 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, 7.7 yards per attempt, 99.6 rating

- 13th by PFF, 11th by ESPN’s QBR

That’s about as reasonable as reasonable expectations come.

Circumstances

A fascinating element of studying Cousins is that, much like the roller coaster that is his past, his skill set has very impressive parts and things that straight up make him lose games. And those things are very clear on paper.

Per PFF, Cousins is a downright prolific deep and play-action passer. He posted an NFL-best 14 touchdowns and averaged nearly 10 yards per attempt with a 129.2 quarterback rating when using play-action last season. Gary Kubiak and Kevin Stefanski ramped up his play-action usage from the previous season from 20.8% of drop backs to 31.4%.

When throwing more than 20 yards, he had the league’s third best passer rating at 119.7.

But Cousins also held onto the ball longer in the pocket than any other quarterback and per NFLNextGen stats was the sixth least aggressive QB when it came to throwing into coverage.

In the past it might not have been consequential but in today’s game it makes a difference that Cousins graded dead last by PFF in running among QBs.

So we have the full picture of Cousins. He’s highly gifted at executing throws with accuracy but is reliant on supporting cast and system that sets him up with open receivers and that doesn’t ask him to play off schedule or in a straight drop-back situations.

How does that gel with what the Vikings have? How do we translate it into expectations?

With his No. 1 receiver — and the league’s leader in deep passing yards — Stefon Diggs in Buffalo, the supporting cast’s strength is much harder to predict, which widens the potential variance for Cousins’s performance.

“Last year the Vikings as a group ranked sixth in receiving grade but I would say this year I would put them very much in the 15 to 18 range,” Pro Football Focus’s George Chahouri said. “If Irv Smith can continue to improve, that’s enormous because tight ends can have such a huge advantage over linebackers. That could push them into the top half of the league but right now there are so many question marks.”

It might be fair to expect Cousins to go as his weapons go. If Adam Thielen handles No. 1 duties with ease and Justin Jefferson steps in right away and Smith takes a big leap next season, he can maintain his level of performance from last season.

At the NFL Combine, Mike Zimmer added that the team has to pass protect better for him to continue to put up big numbers. Under pressure Cousins’s QB rating dropped to 88.4 from 118.1 when kept clean.

But the offensive line still has many of the same questions it has had before. Will Garrett Bradbury improve? Will someone rise to the challenge at guard? Again, Cousins will go as they go.

The schedule is always a factor. The Vikings faced eight of the top 15 defenses in the league but also went against the 30th, 27th, 26th, 24th, 23rd and 22nd ranked teams in points. Defense is tough to predict. We can figure that teams like Detroit and Tampa Bay will improve and the Bears and Packers will still be difficult challenges but everyone in the middle could go either way.

Cousins’s expectations are unique in the fact that he can be the same exact player that he’s been or better but the results could vary anywhere from where he was in 2017 with Washington to where the Vikings were last year.

@jessejames3ball: “How can we trust this team to be anything other tham mediocre with a QB that is terrified to play in big games or in primetime?”

I studied the primetime thing in 2018 and didn’t find any sort of trend that suggested he was actually worse, it was usually just the fact that his team was playing someone good. Though it’s hard to lose every MNF game. And one playoff game in which his team actually blew a lead and was forced to come back and win doesn’t prove his clutchness. The more I’ve investigated the “big game” Kirk thing, the more it seems to be that good teams can exploit his weaknesses. The Packers and 49ers with their interior rush, for example, just destroy Cousins because he doesn’t move off his spot in the pocket. There’s also times over a season where you need the QB to do something that wasn’t drawn up on a chalkboard and he isn’t really athletic enough to go off script and make miraculous throws — and he doesn’t have that gunslinger gene either.

So I don’t think he’s terrified, I think he’s vulnerable to certain circumstances that will pop up against good defenses. How can they be anything more than mediocre? We saw it last year. Kubiak moves him out of harm’s way, Dalvin Cook is great, he’s given the chance to throw downfield and he gets strong offensive line play. They can win the division with all that. That’s about as high as I’d put the ceiling at the moment.

@sportsfanhoov: “Was last season the best that we will see from Kirk Cousins?”

If I had to guess, I’d say yes but going to have another run at it in 2021. This year’s team should still be competitive and he has the system and OC in place to succeed but the O-line is still shaky and weapons have question marks. In the best case scenario for 2021, Jefferson will have a chance to emerge as a really good player, Smith will be a borderline star, Thielen will still be in his prime and Ezra Cleveland taking over at left tackle will give the Vikings a strong tackle duo and a chance with Riley Reiff’s big contract off the books to sign a top guard (if one doesn’t emerge) or even take one high in the 2021 draft. That’s a flowery outlook but not an unreasonable one.

If things don’t go as planned, Cousins is going to give you more 7-9, 8-8, 9-7 type seasons and get eliminated pretty quickly in the playoffs. Because he’s so dependent on the things around him, the answer to “how far can Kirk take them” is answered with: What’s his team look like and who are they playing?