Zimmer vs. Cousins

“I don’t see him taking a step back. I see him continuing to ascend.”

That was Mike Zimmer speaking on Kirk Cousins‘ after his extension that tied him to the Minnesota Vikings through 2022.

As a team, the Vikings did not ascend in 2020. They will finish below .500 for just the second time in Zimmer’s tenure, and a loss on Sunday against the Detroit Lions will give them double-digit losses for the first time since Zimmer took over. Everything about the 2020 season screams descension. But Cousins is a trickier calculation. The quarterback is likely going to throw for over 4,000 yards and flirt with a career-high 35 touchdown passes, and he established meaningful connections with Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen while showing newfound mobility that helped him extend plays.

So how should we reconcile good stats in a six-win season, and were they enough to fulfill Zimmer’s hope of ascension?

For one, Cousins’ stats weren’t good across the board. The turnover bug bit him again, particularly early in the season, which undid some of the progress he made in 2019. In July we wrote about how rare it would be historically for Cousins to repeat his 2019 season, let alone improve upon it. His 25-plus touchdowns, six or fewer interceptions and 8.0 yards per carry put him in a club historically with Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady and Alex Smith because of how well he took care of the ball while still being explosive. Cousins was uncharacteristically good at protecting the football in 2019, so it stood to reason that regression could be coming. Through 15 games he’s tied a career-high with 13 interceptions (up from six) and lost five fumbles (up from three last year).

Zimmer wasn’t interested in evaluating Cousins’ performance when asked on Wednesday, deferring his thoughts until after the season. Cousins, however, was open to answering.

“I do look at it and see that there was an improvement after the bye week in terms of the turnovers,” Cousins said, “that if you had not had those turnovers earlier in the year, maybe you don’t start 1-5. So since the bye week I think there’s been improvement there, but you also started 1-5. To that degree, those numbers or statistics can sometimes point to wins and losses.

“So you look at, ‘Hey, if I can cut own those turnovers as we move forward for the part of the season that we turned it over, maybe we aren’t .500 or hovering around .500. So those are all hypotheticals, but you can certainly make those connections and start to say, ‘Hey, we’re close. I know we can do it.’ But you’ve got to do it for a whole 16-game season and not for a majority of it or for a stretch, but for the whole thing.”

Cousins has thrown 21 touchdowns and only three interceptions since the bye, one of the best stretches of his career, but even then the Vikings only went 5-4 with near losses to the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars.

The reality is that the collapse of the defense makes any offensive conversation hazier. It was easier to compare ’18 Cousins to ’19 Cousins because the defense was more or less a constant. Comparing ’19 Cousins to ’20 Cousins has the asterisk of a defense that is 28th in points allowed and 27th in yards allowed. In some ways, this exonerates Cousins, but is also furthers the notion that the quarterback needs ideal conditions around him to deliver victories.

The current Vikings needed a ’19 Cousins season more than ever because the offense routinely kept the defense out of trouble. Cousins’ 18 turnovers this season dug holes that he then had to climb out of — sometimes admirably, sometimes fruitlessly. His comebacks against Carolina and Jacksonville were required to stay alive in the playoff hunt, but his late-game production against the Green Bay Packers and Atlanta Falcons earlier in the year were virtually meaningless. Altogether, Cousins threw for over 2,400 yards and 22 touchdowns while trailing. One year ago those numbers were 1,271 and 10.

The overall stats look nice heading into the new year, but Cousins understands that they can be misleading. Not even an offense that is sixth in overall yardage can put lipstick on the pig that is 2020.

“It’s better than being in the bottom 10,” reasoned Cousins. “At the same time, stats can be a little misleading, too. I think you have to have a trained eye. I think I remember playing the [Los Angeles] Chargers last year, right? Our defense created seven turnovers. I didn’t think I played all that well during that game. I didn’t think we were all that explosive as an offense putting up a bunch of yards. I thought the Chargers did a good job as a defense, but we won in a blowout in large part because of the seven turnovers created and we had a short field so many times. So you didn’t need to have an explosive offense. You can win a game and be 16th as an offense. So, it kind of is week to week.

“Ultimately wins are the priority. So if you’re the 16th offense, but you’re winning games, you get to say, ‘Well, we didn’t need to be more than that.’ Every year is its own entity and you have to look at those stats with a trained eye. But like I said, you’d rather be sixth than 26th. We’ll be encouraged by that, but at the same time know it’s got to lead to wins for it to really be a meaningful statistic.”

Some may say Cousins was hindered by an overly-conservative offensive approach that prioritized running the ball excessively even when trailing or in long-yardage situations. It’s imaginable that Cousins could’ve had a 40-touchdown season with a more pass-happy scheme. But would that just have exacerbated mistakes? Did the Vikings double down on the run game in reaction to Cousins’ early-season woes? It’s possible, considering they ran the ball 30 times per game after the bye week, and even with his nice post-bye stretch, Cousins still has his highest interception rate as a full-time starter, 2.7%. If you added 10 pass attempts per game to his bottom line (150 total) at his current interception rate, he’d be looking at a 17-interception season, which would lead the NFL.

A deeper look also reveals that Cousins regressed analytically in 2020. His passer rating on deep throws, play-actions and throws under pressure were all down from 2019. His third-down percentage was down. His sack rate was up. These factors shouldn’t necessarily be influenced by a bad defense. Excusing Cousins for losing his top target Stefon Diggs might’ve been valid if not for the Pro Bowl performance of Justin Jefferson that exceeded Diggs’ 2019 season.

Nothing, though, that happened this year was devastating enough that Cousins couldn’t be expected to improve in 2021. Progress in rarely linear, and he’ll have enough continuity with the skill players and offensive coordinator next year that an ascension wouldn’t be as unrealistic as it was in 2020.

“Wins and losses are what ultimately is the measure, so anything else is really in a different priority level. But you can certainly point to many positives or many things that are headed in the right direction or many things to be excited about going forward. But you never want to focus so much on that that you’re ignoring the fact that we have lost the games we’ve lost. So it’s just important you prioritize them correctly. But certainly there are things you can look at and say are really, really good strong points from this year.”

Tying Spielman’s fate to Zimmer almost lets him off the hook for the Cousins extension. Yes, Spielman hired a defense-first curmudgeon, an old-school sexagenarian who coached through an eye injury and hunts varmints on his Kentucky ranch. Sean McVay and Kliff Kingsbury he is not.

I’m not discounting that this is a pass-first league where young, innovative coaches compete with established guys like Belichick and Andy Reid. But Leslie Frasier was hired before Spielman had complete control, so Zimmer is the only coach he’s hired autonomously. Shouldn’t he be allowed to make a coaching change before he’s fired? Furthermore, why should another GM have to deal with Cousins’ $45 million cap hit next year?

Spielman has shown an aptitude for finding value in the draft. For every Laquon Treadwell, there’s a Justin Jefferson. For every Mike Hughes, a Xavier Rhodes. Nobody will hit on every pick, and he likely won’t ever top the 2015 draft where he took Trae Waynes, Eric Kendricks, Danielle Hunter, and Stefon Diggs.

But he manipulates the draft board to his will, finding value in a league where the Green Bay Packers draft a backup for their receiver-deprived MVP quarterback at 26th overall, and the Seattle Seahawks took a third-round linebacker with the next pick. And Spielman just had a good draft. Jefferson broke Randy Moss’ rookie records. Jeff Gladney and Cameron Dantzler were able to hold their own by the end of the season. Ezra Cleveland looks like a much-needed addition to an annually shoddy defensive line. That should buy him time.

He’s a modern-day GM with a retrograde coach and a vanilla quarterback.

The returns on Zimmer have been mixed. They had the 13-3 season in 2017 but have hovered around .500 since. He was a find in some ways. He was so uncertain he’d get the job that he almost didn’t show up for the interview. Other GMs have done worse.

Cousins looks like Spielman’s white elephant. He was supposed to be the player Washington never fully appreciated, a good ol’ Midwestern boy who would elevate a team with an elite defense that was on the doorstep of a Super Bowl berth. Instead, he’s been good enough to put up stats that poorly reflect his performance in meaningful games.

Spielman has backed Cousins every step of the way. Even last year, when the team was 1-5 and would have been justified in having a bye-week fire sale, Spielman gave a whole-hearted endorsement of his quarterback. We just don’t know if that’s because he believes in Cousins, or he knows that he has to say so publicly because he gave him an almost unmovable deal.

By tying Spielman to his coach, he’s going to be inclined to think like him. Win now. Play to Zimmer’s strengths. Sign Dalvin Tomlinson and Patrick Peterson instead of patching up the offensive line. If he’s tied to Cousins, maybe he looks at the receiver market or emphasizes protection for him, knowing it can only make him better. Perhaps he pulls off a Cousins trade, convincing ownership that if he can move off that contract, he can trade up to take a quarterback and get out of cap hell.

The decision to tether Spielman to Zimmer will have ramifications for years to come. If this team struggles and the Wilfs fire Spielman and Zimmer, the next regime inherits Cousins’ $45 million hit, Michael Pierce and Dalvin Tomlinson on multi-year deals, and Dalvin Cook’s massive extension. They will take on a team built to run the ball and stop the run.

Instead, why not give Spielman a chance to rectify the Cousins situation by building him an offensive line and giving him more weapons next year? He’s already got a massive hit. Worst-case scenario, Cousins would be off the books by the time a new GM took over. It seems fitting that Spielman’s fate would be linked to Cousins. In some ways, it already is.