Post by Funkytown on Sept 13, 2020 10:26:01 GMT -6
A piece from Purple Insider:
...
Good little read about how it all started:
purpleinsider.substack.com/p/kirk-cousins-has-come-a-long-way
For Kirk Cousins, 2012 was a lifetime ago.
He was 24 years old. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t at the center of any debates. He wasn’t scrutinized for anything he said — in part because nobody asked for his opinion. There were no expectations.
Cousins was that other guy Washington drafted. The Michigan State kid who confused analysts when he was selected.
Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller wrote at the time: “Their third pick [Cousins] gets an F. Why the [Football Team] would draft two quarterbacks in their first four selections is beyond me.”
Funny thing is that at the time the pick was confusing to Cousins himself.
“I remember the day I got drafted I was a little bit disappointed and was not expecting to go where I went in terms of the round or the team going to Washington and I was trying to process that,” Cousins said in a one-on-one with Purple Insider. “I remember my dad mentioning, ‘Think about the fact that Mike Shanahan the head coach drafted you, he had to go out of his way to pick you because it was unconventional and he’s worked with people like Joe Montana, Steve Young and John Elway, if someone who has worked with Joe Montana, Steve Young and John Elway is going out of his way to draft you, that has to be a good reflection on you and also has to mean that he’s going to be willing to coach you and invest in you.’”
Shanahan did exactly that. He and his staff, which was loaded with future head coaches including Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay and Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur, were drawn to Cousins’s attention to detail and fit in the Shanahan-style offense.
“We talked about it from the day we drafted him, just his approach to the game, it’s rare,” LaFleur said this week. “He does everything in his power to be at his best and you could see that early on in the process, just the amount of time that he would spend post practice, the amount of time he would spend in the film room, just watching tape, the types of questions he would come back on a daily basis.”
Even if the staff liked what they saw behind the scenes from Cousins, the 2012 season belonged to Robert Griffin III. He was throwing bombs and running through defenses like only the likes of Randall Cunningham, Steve Young, Steve McNair and Michael Vick had done before.
Entering Week 14 against the Baltimore, Griffin III had 24 total touchdowns to four interceptions, a 104.2 quarterback rating and nearly 3,000 yards passing and 750 yards rushing.
But Griffin got hurt on a late-game drive against the Ravens and Cousins came in. Cousins threw a touchdown to put Washington within two points and then ran for a two-point conversion. He led a game-winning drive in overtime to give Washington a 31-28 victory.
Griffin’s injury was expected to keep the budding star out for at least a week, putting Cousins in the spotlight to make his first career start.
His debut came with little fanfare. A very small portion of the national audience would see a 1 E.T. start between Cleveland-Washington and there was no hype whatsoever with the superstar Griffin III out. Pregame shows didn’t spend much time on the fourth rounder.
But looking back at Cousins’s first start we can see both the talent that Shanahan believed was there from the time he was controversially drafted and how far the Vikings’ franchise quarterback has come. We can see with the benefit of hindsight the long road he traveled and the vast differences in his game and his life then and now.
“The coaches had more confidence in me than I had in myself”
You would think that Shanahan, knowing he’d put his hide on the line by picking Cousins, would ramp things up in practice the week before starting his backup quarterback. It seems natural to turn up the intensity to 11 in order to have the team fully prepared for a rookie’s first start. But that wasn’t Shanahan’s way. Instead he did things as they have always been done, which meant holding nary a padded practice that week.
Shanahan’s philosophy of holding lower impact practices late in the season had come from his time in San Francisco under Bill Walsh. These days coaches have access to data and tracking information that tells them exactly to the number how much workload has been on the back of a player versus how much rest they need to properly recover. The technology didn’t exist in the 1980s to tell teams anything about player health and even in 2012 the NFL didn’t have that level of analytics. All Shanahan had was his belief that Walsh’s gut feeling that players were already worn down enough by that time of year.
“I think we only had one full-speed practice and the rest of the week was entirely walk-throughs, which was a different experience from what I had done in college, which was basically… full speed as much as you could,” Cousins said.
Cousins knew starting was going to be different from coming off the bench for a few plays, as he had twice during the year including the win over the Ravens.
It meant having the added pressure of his first starting appearance being a barometer for whether Shanahan made the right decision in the draft.
“I remember the coaches having more confidence in me than I had in myself,” Cousins said. “They really believed that we would be just fine. I probably had my doubts.”
He was 24 years old. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t at the center of any debates. He wasn’t scrutinized for anything he said — in part because nobody asked for his opinion. There were no expectations.
Cousins was that other guy Washington drafted. The Michigan State kid who confused analysts when he was selected.
Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller wrote at the time: “Their third pick [Cousins] gets an F. Why the [Football Team] would draft two quarterbacks in their first four selections is beyond me.”
Funny thing is that at the time the pick was confusing to Cousins himself.
“I remember the day I got drafted I was a little bit disappointed and was not expecting to go where I went in terms of the round or the team going to Washington and I was trying to process that,” Cousins said in a one-on-one with Purple Insider. “I remember my dad mentioning, ‘Think about the fact that Mike Shanahan the head coach drafted you, he had to go out of his way to pick you because it was unconventional and he’s worked with people like Joe Montana, Steve Young and John Elway, if someone who has worked with Joe Montana, Steve Young and John Elway is going out of his way to draft you, that has to be a good reflection on you and also has to mean that he’s going to be willing to coach you and invest in you.’”
Shanahan did exactly that. He and his staff, which was loaded with future head coaches including Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay and Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur, were drawn to Cousins’s attention to detail and fit in the Shanahan-style offense.
“We talked about it from the day we drafted him, just his approach to the game, it’s rare,” LaFleur said this week. “He does everything in his power to be at his best and you could see that early on in the process, just the amount of time that he would spend post practice, the amount of time he would spend in the film room, just watching tape, the types of questions he would come back on a daily basis.”
Even if the staff liked what they saw behind the scenes from Cousins, the 2012 season belonged to Robert Griffin III. He was throwing bombs and running through defenses like only the likes of Randall Cunningham, Steve Young, Steve McNair and Michael Vick had done before.
Entering Week 14 against the Baltimore, Griffin III had 24 total touchdowns to four interceptions, a 104.2 quarterback rating and nearly 3,000 yards passing and 750 yards rushing.
But Griffin got hurt on a late-game drive against the Ravens and Cousins came in. Cousins threw a touchdown to put Washington within two points and then ran for a two-point conversion. He led a game-winning drive in overtime to give Washington a 31-28 victory.
Griffin’s injury was expected to keep the budding star out for at least a week, putting Cousins in the spotlight to make his first career start.
His debut came with little fanfare. A very small portion of the national audience would see a 1 E.T. start between Cleveland-Washington and there was no hype whatsoever with the superstar Griffin III out. Pregame shows didn’t spend much time on the fourth rounder.
But looking back at Cousins’s first start we can see both the talent that Shanahan believed was there from the time he was controversially drafted and how far the Vikings’ franchise quarterback has come. We can see with the benefit of hindsight the long road he traveled and the vast differences in his game and his life then and now.
“The coaches had more confidence in me than I had in myself”
You would think that Shanahan, knowing he’d put his hide on the line by picking Cousins, would ramp things up in practice the week before starting his backup quarterback. It seems natural to turn up the intensity to 11 in order to have the team fully prepared for a rookie’s first start. But that wasn’t Shanahan’s way. Instead he did things as they have always been done, which meant holding nary a padded practice that week.
Shanahan’s philosophy of holding lower impact practices late in the season had come from his time in San Francisco under Bill Walsh. These days coaches have access to data and tracking information that tells them exactly to the number how much workload has been on the back of a player versus how much rest they need to properly recover. The technology didn’t exist in the 1980s to tell teams anything about player health and even in 2012 the NFL didn’t have that level of analytics. All Shanahan had was his belief that Walsh’s gut feeling that players were already worn down enough by that time of year.
“I think we only had one full-speed practice and the rest of the week was entirely walk-throughs, which was a different experience from what I had done in college, which was basically… full speed as much as you could,” Cousins said.
Cousins knew starting was going to be different from coming off the bench for a few plays, as he had twice during the year including the win over the Ravens.
It meant having the added pressure of his first starting appearance being a barometer for whether Shanahan made the right decision in the draft.
“I remember the coaches having more confidence in me than I had in myself,” Cousins said. “They really believed that we would be just fine. I probably had my doubts.”
Regardless of the bumps in the road at the beginning and some messy reads and footwork at times, Cousins came away having shown his potential. But it was not an easy ride from there.
“If anything it may have given me a false sense of security,” Cousins said. “You have only one start and play well and you think that maybe they are all going to be like this and it was far from it.”
In the following two seasons, he went 1-7 as a starter with more interceptions than touchdowns and a 74.3 quarterback rating.
But Washington gave him a chance even after Shanahan was gone. Without that first start and evidence that he could execute the offense at a high level, who knows how many chances he would have gotten.
Cousins won the starting job in 2015 and put together one of the best quarterback seasons in the NFL that year with over 4,000 yards passing and a 101.6 rating.
You already know the rest of his history — though nobody would have dreamed it on the day he was drafted or before his first start.
“It’s more fun to look back when you can smile on it and chuckle when you feel like everything worked out and so it’s even better knowing that life led you down the right path to the right place,” Cousins said.
He’s come a long way.
Still Cousins enters Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers trying to meet expectations and looking to prove right the people in the Vikings’ front office who believed in him and the coaches who are confident in him. And he’ll have a running game and play-actions and bootlegs to take the pressure off.
So maybe some things don’t change as much as we think.
“If anything it may have given me a false sense of security,” Cousins said. “You have only one start and play well and you think that maybe they are all going to be like this and it was far from it.”
In the following two seasons, he went 1-7 as a starter with more interceptions than touchdowns and a 74.3 quarterback rating.
But Washington gave him a chance even after Shanahan was gone. Without that first start and evidence that he could execute the offense at a high level, who knows how many chances he would have gotten.
Cousins won the starting job in 2015 and put together one of the best quarterback seasons in the NFL that year with over 4,000 yards passing and a 101.6 rating.
You already know the rest of his history — though nobody would have dreamed it on the day he was drafted or before his first start.
“It’s more fun to look back when you can smile on it and chuckle when you feel like everything worked out and so it’s even better knowing that life led you down the right path to the right place,” Cousins said.
He’s come a long way.
Still Cousins enters Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers trying to meet expectations and looking to prove right the people in the Vikings’ front office who believed in him and the coaches who are confident in him. And he’ll have a running game and play-actions and bootlegs to take the pressure off.
So maybe some things don’t change as much as we think.
Good little read about how it all started:
purpleinsider.substack.com/p/kirk-cousins-has-come-a-long-way
... and neither is this Chris guy.