The Great Eight Debate: Are Wins a QB Stat?

The Minnesota Vikings, having hired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to be their general manager, have one of the most difficult conundrums to resolve in the NFL — whether to move on from Kirk Cousins.

After watching the last three weeks of the playoffs, there’s reason to be skeptical about the value Cousins provides. Put simply, we have witnessed some of the best stretches of quarterback play ever. What Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow did in the AFC during their postseason runs was extraordinary. They collectively averaged 0.406 expected points added per play, which is miles beyond the top performer during the season, Aaron Rodgers’ 0.257.

That, along with high-level playoff performances from Matthew Stafford and Tom Brady, casts the Vikings’ quarterback situation in a harsher light. It’s hard to imagine Cousins putting up a single performance like that, much less four or five such consecutive clutch performances.

What is becoming more evident, if it wasn’t already, is that Cousins is not in that top tier of NFL quarterbacks. He has a solid arm. He generally makes good decisions. He’s a popular fantasy player because he consistently puts up big numbers. He was even named to the Pro Bowl on Monday as a replacement for the injured Rodgers. But he’s not an elite QB.

It’s a frustrating problem because Cousins is the rare quarterback who puts in consistently impressive statistical performances without the wins to follow. Though it’s true that it isn’t necessarily fair to judge quarterbacks on their win-loss records — few consider the all-time leader in winning percentage among retired quarterbacks, Daryle Lamonica, to be the best quarterback in NFL history — it’s curious that one can go so long in a career of high-level statistical play while producing a 59-59-2 record as the starter. After all, quarterback is the most important position in the NFL, and wins should coincide with QB performance after a point.

Cousins’ elite statistical record is well established, too. Since he became a regular starter in 2015, only seven quarterbacks have maintained a passer rating above 100, with Cousins slotting just above Tom Brady at sixth. Cousins also ranks sixth in adjusted net yards per attempt over that time and fourth in completion rate over expected, a measure that accounts for the difficulty of throws downfield and to the sidelines.

As we add context to some of these statistics, however, Cousins falls a bit relative to his peers. He sits 10th in that group in PFF grade over that time and 13th in garbage-time adjusted EPA/play. This is among a group of 42 quarterbacks, so it’s not a bad ranking, per se. But it begins to paint a picture.

On top of that, we have to look at how quarterbacks play in high-leverage situations. After all, one of the ways quarterbacks express their importance is how they perform on third-and-long and when forced to pass down multiple scores late in the game.

On that second point, Cousins hasn’t been particularly effective. Ben Baldwin, a football analytics researcher and contributor to The Athletic, has looked extensively at quarterbacks when playing from behind (within a two-score margin) with less than 10 minutes left. Below is a chart of how often a drive has succeeded after adjusting for field position and time remaining. (Cousins is there at No. 75.)



Cousins’ teams have been well below average in this respect, too, and we can attribute a lot of that to the passing game. When looking at expected points gained (EPA) on passing plays in those situations, Cousins turns out to be lackluster. His average of minus-0.028 EPA per play ranks 30th in the NFL.

That holds true on third-and-long as well, where there isn’t much threat of a run and the yardage gained is secondary to the ability to convert a new set of downs — 5 yards on third-and-7 is typically a bad play outside of very specific circumstances. His average of 0.033 expected points per passing attempt in that situation sits 25th in the league.

Third-down play is fairly volatile year-to-year, so players with fewer attempts in those situations are likely to regress to their standard-down EPA, but that’s not a good explanation for why Cousins ranks so poorly relative to his normal EPA given the sheer number of attempts he’s had in this scenario. He ranks 13th of those 42 quarterbacks on standard downs (defined as first and second downs, before final 10 minutes), but 25th in clutch situations (third-and-long, trailing or leading with 10 minutes left).

We can crudely combine this, EPA when leading late in the game by two or fewer scores (Cousins ranks 24th among his cohorts) and EPA when trailing late in the game by two or fewer scores to create a rough “clutchness” index, which we can then compare to all-purpose play throughout the rest of the game. When looking at the difference between that and play on standard downs before the final 10 minutes of the game, we can then figure out which quarterbacks are most stymied by situational football.

Kirk Cousins' EPA per passing attempt

Situation EPA League Rank

Standard 0.116 13th
Clutch 0.047 25th
% difference 86.3 38th


That final calculation doesn’t tell us which quarterbacks are “best” in the clutch — the second one does a much better job of that — but rather which quarterbacks are better or worse than they usually play when it comes to situational football. They are simply being compared to themselves, which might help us reveal a weakness or strength in their games. The final number is essentially an estimated percent difference in performance dropoff in clutch situations versus standard ones.

It’s relevant that it is easier to get better in small samples (like “clutch” situations) when standard play is so poor — and vice versa — but Cousins’ play dropping off in the most important situations in a football game is a good explanation for why his teams don’t win despite his generally high level of play even after a sizable sample of play. As somewhere between the seventh and 10th best quarterback in the league, we’d expect an above-average win rate. Given that Cousins has usually had an excellent supporting cast, we might expect even higher.

How has Cousins created this gulf between his every-down play and his play in high-leverage situations? It goes back to what makes him tick.

‘Playing the game like a CEO’

While his diligence and studiousness helped Cousins ascend from fifth-stringer to Michigan State record-holder, those attributes also might be capping his potential today.

After the Vikings’ Week 6 win against Philadelphia in 2019, Cousins outlined his football philosophy. He said that at Michigan State, someone told him to “‘Picture yourself playing the game like a CEO, like you’re in a three-piece suit.’ That’s kind of how you have to play the game, you can’t be emotional.” Cousins added that it has been a core part of his approach from that point on.

A month later, after a dramatic comeback against the Broncos, Cousins brought up that philosophy again.

“You’ve got to be a pro and just kind of stay right here, and that includes when things are going really well,” he said after the game. “When we have a three-touchdown lead against Atlanta, you’ve got to stay right here, and then the same is true when you’re down. That’s what gives you the opportunity to withstand a three-touchdown lead and then also to come back from a three-touchdown deficit. So you just stay right here. Some people call it boring. I call it being smart, being the CEO and just staying the course.”

That even-keeled process might have been encouraged by his brain coach, a “human-performance optimization” specialist that he hired in college to improve his focus, sleep patterns and body chemistry. In a 2017 interview with Sports Illustrated, Cousins described going over his brain activity with Tim Royer, the president of Neuropeak Pro. In the piece, author Greg Bishop points out that Cousins underwent training specifically to keep himself within a particular emotional range, never peaking too high or troughing too low.

As his father told ESPN’s Courtney Cronin, Cousins’ mentality on the field is that of a surgeon doing an operation, and a surgeon can’t go into an operation without strict emotional control.

Systems, process and method are essential to Cousins. “Process relaxes me,” he told Bishop. He admitted to breaking down film while in the delivery room with his wife during the birth of their first child.

His fanatical devotion to playing quarterback is by no means the reason he’s hit a ceiling, nor is it even all that unusual. Successful quarterbacks are famously monomaniacal. From Tom Brady’s radically altered diet and body-care routine to Peyton Manning’s slavish devotion to film study, it’s difficult to find a successful modern quarterback who hasn’t tried to find some way to cram 25 hours into a day or seek a radical edge in the name of improvement.

Rather, it seems like Cousins has eschewed inventiveness and gutsy play for a standardized approach to football. Self-described as a person who isn’t “the guy who wants to open my parachute at the last minute,” Cousins does his level best to make sure all his ducks are in a row, that his I’s are dotted and T’s crossed. He plays like he says he does: systematically, methodically and with deliberation and purpose.

Cousins has insisted that his road to success involves following his progressions, making his reads and taking what the defense gives him. In response to any offensive struggles, he can always fall back on this mindset when explaining his process.

In 2015, in his first year as a full-fledged starter, Cousins was asked why the Washington offense was doing such a poor job of converting third-and-longs. Cousins responded, “I think it’s very important to take what the defense gives you. Sometimes, it’s a completion of 2 or 3 yards that may end up moving the chains. Sometimes, it’s not being greedy. Other times, if they play aggressive and give you something open down the field, then you take it. But I think it’s all about the old adage of taking what the defense gives you. When you do that, usually, you have good success, or at least you avoid critical errors and it gives you a chance then to win.”

Throughout 2016 and 2017, he would repeat the mantra of taking what the defense gives him. In Minnesota, he beat the drum even more, telling reporters that he checked down to a throw over the middle in the two-minute drill because that’s what the defense was giving him — even though it forced the offense to drain valuable clock as he led a comeback attempt.

This season, against the Rams in Week 16 on third-and-goal at the 6-yard line, Cousins threw a wobbly pass to Alexander Mattison, who was running a flat route at the line of scrimmage. There was virtually no chance Mattison would have scored had he caught the ball, and it wouldn’t have improved any potential fourth-down effort should the Vikings have opted to go for it.

“That ball went where I wanted it to,” said Cousins after the game. “The throw, I think the ball went about where I wanted it to because the guy matched up, so I was just trying to put it in a safe spot.”

‘I don’t think you want to live’ being aggressive

As a quarterback, Cousins can be aggressive in the traditional sense — he’ll throw deep and even challenge tight windows. But he rarely operates outside of the structure of the play, even to take advantage of opportunities. His aggressiveness is defined by the defense and the play call, not any sense of risky intuition. In 2021, he had an above-average rate of throws into tight windows, per NFL Next Gen Stats, and though his rate of deep passes was down this year compared to his career, it’s still hovering just above the NFL average at 11.9 percent of all throws. In 2020, Cousins ranked 12th of 39 quarterbacks in deep passing rate after ranking ninth the year before.

If he’s so cautious, how does he throw deep so much? It’s because those throws are baked into the play, and they’re often a part of his play-action rollouts, a type of play that typically brings about deeper shots. With his rate of play action down this year, his rate of deep shots also declined. Early in the year, when his play-action rate was lower than it had ever been, his willingness to chuck it deep waned — he ranked 31st of 34 quarterbacks in deep ball rate over the first four weeks of the season. But he’s aggressive when the defense allows him to be — and when the play demands it.

Cousins is consistent about how he describes his failures and successes. When asked why a play fell apart, he’ll often go through his progression and explain what the read on the play was supposed to be and how he followed it. The same is true of his success. Instead of describing a matchup he liked, a need for aggressiveness, a tell from an opponent revealed on film or a technique developed alongside a receiver, Cousins will go through his reads and explain how that play came about courtesy of his textbook approach to quarterbacking. Even what appear to be his most aggressive plays are often broken down as either mechanical responses to the defense or as mistakes he made — despite their success.

Aggressive or reckless?

When former Washington head coach Jay Gruden spoke to Wickersham in 2017, he said of Cousins: “If he does have a weakness, it’s that he’s too much of a perfectionist. He wants everything to be perfect. Unfortunately, I can’t get guys 30 f*cking yards open all the time. There are going to be some tight-window throws he’s going to have to throw some days.”

When asked to respond, Cousins said he’d throw 20 interceptions a year if he played like his coach was asking him to. Gruden’s reaction to that was to say that Cousins would also be throwing 60 touchdowns.

This wasn’t the only time he’s been asked by his head coach to take more risks. Later that same year, Cousins went on a DC-area radio station and said that Gruden told him that he gave “defenders too much credit,” adding “maybe you’re out-thinking what the defense is even ready to do. There are times where you study the game and say, ‘Let’s not give them too much credit and let’s go play.'”

Now, four-plus years later, Vikings fans have experienced the same thing. In late November, Zimmer revealed that he had spoken to Cousins about being more comfortable with risk, saying he had given the quarterback the “green light” to be more aggressive with the ball. “If you throw an interception, hey, you throw an interception,” Zimmer said. “When plays are there, you gotta try and make them.”

Still, Cousins didn’t see this as a positive opportunity. “I don’t want to throw picks even if the coach gave me the green light to. I’m still pretty much playing the way I’ve always played. Certainly, I don’t feel constrained by any means, but still very systematic, decisive. You understand when you hold the football, you hold much of the organization in your hands. So, you want to take that seriously.”

Zimmer wasn’t alone in his desire to see more aggressive plays. Offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak wanted to see more as well.

“You obviously don’t want to be reckless with the ball,” he said earlier this year, “but we do have good playmakers that have a chance to do something with it. (We) don’t want him to force the ball into coverage, but there’s going to be times where we have to be more aggressive — more aggressive play calls, more aggressive finding those guys, more aggressive scrambling. When you don’t have success in those situations, you’ve got to keep looking for answers on how you can be better.”

Cousins isn’t wrong in suggesting a quarterback holds the organization in his hands every time he picks up the football. But constantly holding that weight and channeling the enormity of that feeling into one’s playing style makes it difficult to take chances and play aggressively when the situation calls for it.

The Vikings have one of the best young playmakers in the league in Jefferson, and they faced some stretches this season where they struggled to get him the ball. When Jefferson saw just five targets against the Ravens on Nov. 7, Cousins was asked about Jefferson’s relatively small involvement.

“(That’s) probably just the way it plays out,” he said. “You have to be ready for how much they were trying to take him away, too.”

When Jefferson exploded the next two weeks against the Chargers and Packers, Cousins was asked once again about whether there was or should be a concerted effort to get him the ball. “It’s week-to-week what teams want to do, how they want to defend you and what they want to focus on and take away,” he said. When asked again a few days later, he continued to demur.

But Kubiak preferred a more proactive approach. After the Ravens game, he said, “You don’t want to come out of a game and Justin has (so few) targets. He’s well-deserving of getting the ball more. He helps us win games, so certainly every week we want to get our playmakers the ball. Him, Dalvin, Adam, those are our top playmakers. So we have to be more conscious of that.”

It’s an issue that the offensive game plan has to go out of its way to give Jefferson more targets in order for Cousins to involve one of the most dynamic weapons in the league. Otherwise, he’s subject to the defense and what it gives him.

How mechanical is too mechanical?

The ability to adapt and react to defenses is mostly what coaches want from their quarterback. That is why Cousins makes over $30 million a year and why he generally ranks in the top 10 in most advanced metrics, especially on standard downs.

But there are two extremely dangerous types of quarterbacks: Those who don’t do anything their coaches tell them and those who do everything their coaches tell them.

Quarterbacks cannot simply be if-then processors, mechanically going through reads until the right play meets the right defense. When Aaron Rodgers sees a backup cornerback go into the game to cover for an injury, he’ll ruthlessly pick on the player until that player proves him wrong. For Cousins, the matchup seemingly doesn’t matter. Against the Browns in Week 4, Jefferson had as many targets against Pro Bowler Denzel Ward as he did against Greedy Williams, who has struggled in the opportunities he has seen.

It’s more complicated than that, of course; Cousins doesn’t just read the play and pick the route that beats the coverage. He pays attention to leverage and tendencies and the likelihood that a safety will spin down from deep and so on. He would have to in order to succeed in the NFL for this long.

But it boils down to an unwillingness to risk making a catastrophic error.

On third down, especially long third downs, the defense can be more comfortable putting a roof on top and keeping defenders deep — allowing receivers to run short. Cousins is happy to take those short throws, which is why his average “air yards to sticks,” or depth of target relative of the line to convert, is well below NFL average on third-and-long. As a result, his third-down conversion rate on long distances (7 to 12 yards) is below average despite boasting a completion percentage in those situations well above the NFL average. He completes more passes than other quarterbacks but can’t seem to make conversions. He’s taking what the defense is giving him, in part because the defense wants him to take it.

There are few quarterbacks better than Cousins at quickly diagnosing a coverage, responding to post-snap changes and finding the right route against the right defense. He’s remarkable throughout most of the game in most situations. He’s an effective quarterback teach tape — a textbook on the field — for younger players learning the game and rarely makes a mistake when firing off against diagnosable coverages and blitzes. Those qualities are why he can put teams in situations to win.

But a big part of the reason he’s a career .500 quarterback is embedded in his quarterbacking DNA. Painting by the numbers can create a good picture. But to be truly great, Cousins has to be more comfortable coloring outside the lines.