Must Fix vs. Must Maintain for 2022

Yea, it's not like there is any magic to situational football.  

If Kevin O'Connell's system can net the Vikings +0.5 yards per attempt on the short stuff, that's a majority of of throws.  This isn't even that big of a change.  Compare some numbers on yards per attempt behind line of scromage:
#1 in the NFL was Jimmy Garoppolo at 8.0 YPA
Stafford was tied for #15 at 5.7
Cousins was tied for #23 at 4.5

Then look at short throws
#1 was Tayson Hill with 7.4 YPA
#16 (a good midpoint) was Tom Brady at 6.6 YPA
Stafford and Cousins were tied at #22 with 6.1 YPA

Saying O'Connell's system can gain +0.5 YPA on the short stuff suggests the the O'Connell system would move the Vikings to about League average in this type of passing game.  With short game targets like Dalvin Cook, Kene Nwangwu, Irv Smith & a solid WR group, this isn't a huge stretch.  On 350-450 attempts per year, this is +175-225 yards per season.  

Additionally, 2021 was not a great year for Cousins accuracy.  His 66.3% was his lowest as a Viking, below is Vikings average of 68.3%. Meanwhile, Stafford had the most accurate season of his career at 67.3, well above his career average of 63.0%.  It's a little more remote, but Goff's completion% went up by over 4% when O'Connell became the OC of the Rams in 2020.  I would take that as evidence that 1) O'Connell's system is friendly to a QB completion % and 2) the impact is visible in year 1.  2-4% might seem small but on 500-600 pass attempts, that an extra 10-25 completions at 11ish yards per completion = + 100-250 yards per season.  This is a bit duplicative with YPA, but it just shows that there is gain to be had with basic execution.  

What does Cousins add? The two things he's good at: avoiding interceptions and avoiding sacks.

Stafford had 17 interceptions, Cousins had 7. If continuing an extra 10 drives is worth 20-25 yards per drive, that's an additional +200-250 yards per season. 

Looking at pressure, the Vikings allows a significantly higher pressure %: Vikings 26.6 vs the Rams 16.6% - but the Sack counts were Cousins: 28 vs Stafford: 30.  If the combination of new personnel on the offensive line + coaching + quick passing game can reduce the Vikings pressure rate even slightly, there is potential for more upside that wouldn't show up as passing stats, but avoiding negative situations.  

Some of those numbers are duplicative, but +300-500 yards passing when moving to an offensive minded coach is a reasonable expectation.  That would put the Vikings right in the mix of top 5 offenses.

However PFF splits it out:

2021 Deep Passing Stats

You answered the rest of those questions for yourself in the rest of the text you quoted.

"I wish our QB would throw more interceptions, that would make him better"  Wow, that's not a thing you read every day.  

Bummer, I'm not an Elite member so I can't see the data. Why are you guys paying for stats that Reignman gives for free?

I still don't know how they came up with 10 TD's for Cousins on deep passes lol. It's either 9 or 11 depending on where you draw the line, 15 or 16 yards. There's no 15½ which is where 10 would have to be.

This is factually, demonstrably not true. Turnovers and interceptions are one of the things most strongly correlated with winning; the link is stronger than things you would get with extra aggression.  You don't even need to believe me on this, you have a mountain of data where you can readily prove it to yourself. If you don't want to, here are some freebies:

Numbers Game: Which Stats Correlate The Most With Wins In The NFL?

Stats with stronger correlation to winning.

How Turnover Margin Affects Win Probability and Win Totals in the NFL

But instead of any of those, let's quote someone I KNOW you have to trust.

Interceptions lead to losing is such a fundamental truth that you can't even make it a single sentence before you obliterate your own platitude.  Part of Rodgers and Brady being elite is them avoiding interceptions.  If Cousins threw more interceptions, the wheels would come off the offense.  Those are your words, not mine.  

And if you know that wishing for more aggression that would lead to more interceptions which would lead to losing, so why do you want it?  I'm glad you answer that too:

You can have the opinion that losing is fine and justified, but that's a different thing than saying aggression-fueled interceptions would lead to more wins with the current roster.

Oh noes, are you trying to correlate me on how turnover rate is related to winning? Me? It's what I've harped on the most during the entire Zimmer era, and his play it safe takeaway averse defense. I wrote the book on the correlation between turnovers and winning. Go ahead, read the book. But here's the thing ... you're strawmanning me again lol.

TL;DR: It's what you're doing when you're not turning the ball over that matters more than turning the ball over. If you got the talent, like the Vikings do, turn the freaking ball loose! You can overcome turnovers. It's when you have someone like Ponder where you gotta be worried, but if you got a guy like Ponder you got other problems. The reason bad teams turn the ball over a lot, is because they're bad, not because they're being overly aggressive.

You absolutely need to be more aggressive on offense to win in this league. There's no doubt about it. I got numbers all over this message board that prove as much. But I'm also on record as saying there's such a thing as being stupidly aggressive, which can be counterproductive. You can't just throw hail mary's every down for example. And you can't have an excessive number of turnovers. You have to find the sweet spot. Obviously you try not to turn the ball over, but if they happen because you've adopted a more aggressive philosophy, and your team is good/talented, it shouldn't be a problem. If you're playing solely to avoid turnovers, well congratulations, you're going to be 8-9.

Otherwise explain to me why the Vikings were watching the playoffs from home despite having the fewest turnovers last year (13) and fewest INT's (7), tying the Packers (HFA) and Seahawks (also missed the playoffs) in both categories. One of those teams is not like the others. Meanwhile the Rams threw the 5th most INT's and won the Super Bowl. Clearly there's more to the equation than just turnovers.

*spoiler alert* ... I'm going to say something completely off the rails here, but try to stay with me this time ... this is a no strawman zone ... the Vikings would have made the playoffs had Cousins thrown 5 more INT's ... whoa whoa woah, are you still with me? Am I off my meds again? Let me explain, if he threw those 5 bonus INT because he was throwing down field more often to JJ and AT instead of Conklin and Ham, how many more big plays would that have led to, and how many more points would have lit up the scoreboard? Even better, we wouldn't have been at the bottom of the league in 3rd down conversions, or 3-n-outs. Which means our lousy defense wouldn't have been on the field as much giving up points. Boom! Did I just prove Rushing Turnovers lead to winning? #TurnoverContextMatters.

But hey, maybe Cousins just sucks at being aggressive, and being conservative is the only way he knows how to thrive. The gravitational pull to .500 suddenly makes sense doesn't it? So which is it? Does he suck and we have to remain conservative, or is he a god like the Kirkistans believe? If he is, then there shouldn't be a problem being more aggressive. In fact the Kirkistans should demand it. Turn your boy loose and let him shut us up.

A team that pushes the ball down the field can overcome turnovers better than a dink n dunk team that leads the league in 3-n-outs. What is a 3-n-out but a turnover where you borrowed the ball for 3 plays anyway? A checkdown on 3rd and long is a turnover 100% of the time, but the deep shot is only a turnover some of the time. Only one of those scenarios shows up on the stat sheet.

The Vikings won the turnover battle 8 times last year and only lost it 4 times, and 7 of those were a +2 advantage. +2!! They were 3-4 in those 7 games, and 2 of those were against Chicago. And what does the book say about that? Did you read it? It says they should have won at least 10.6 games. Meanwhile they were 1-3 in the games where they lost the turnover battle. All 4 games were a -1, so we're even worse than what the book says we should have been. And the one game we won (Pittsburgh), we tried to blow a 46-0 lead. Man we couldn't even overcome a -1 turnover disadvantage.

Now don't @ me again with another turnover correlation strawman salad until you explain to me how the Vikings, with superstar Kirk Cousins were watching the playoffs from home despite having the fewest turnovers last year, while Matty Stafford and his league leading INT's were playing in the Super Bowl. It might have something to do with how Stafford's aggression was busy making plays when he wasn't throwing INT's, while Cousins conservative nature wasn't making plays because he was too busy being careful not to throw more than 7. It's so simple a caveman can see it.

If Cousins is so good, what's the problem? Why wouldn't we want him chucking the ball all over the yard like all the QB's who are above .500? Oh no, 5 more INT's, big whoop if you're lighting up the scoreboard.

Let's test this theory. Here are the 2021 QB stats for deep throws sorted by who throws downfield most often:



There's Cousins at #13 with 12.7% of his throws going deep.  Looking at the QBs above him, there are:

- The mobile guys - Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson -  Cousins is not this profile of guys and it makes sense that they get extra deep shots buying time with their legs.  Here's the problem though - it wasn't a straight connection to winning.  The Seahawks (7-10) and Ravens (8-9) had similar records to the Vikings and missed the playoffs.  The Cardinals made it to 11-6, but lost in the first round.

- Some Horrible QBs / teams - Justin Fields, Jalen Hurts, Taylor Heinicke, Baker Mayfield - These guys are worse QBs then Cousins, throwing deep more did not help them.  

- Guys with limited data sets - Drew Lock, Jameis Winston, Tayson Hill - they have 5-7 deep completions for the season, maybe if you combine Taysom Hill + Jameis Winston you get a new Saints QB that is kind of what you are arguing for.  They throw deep a lot, but the results also aren't there at 9-8 and missed playoffs.  Of this group, Jameis Winston is probably the guy who is closest to what you are wishing for from Cousins, Winston threw caution to the wind and bombed it out deep to an elite receiving group highlighted by his 2019 season.  But that season cost Winston his job in Tampa, and the Bucs won the Super Bowl when Tom Brady arrived.  And given that Winston's best season as a starter was 9-7 with an overall record of 33-44, I would not make the argument that Cousins needs to be more like Jameis Winston.

- Cousin's Stat Neighbors #11-14 - Joe Burrow, Aaron Rodgers, Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr - Burrow and Rodgers are noted deep ball throwers, the have great rating, good stats and receivers to back it up; it makes sense that Cousins is below these guys on the list.  Derek Carr is a guy often put in the same tier with Cousins, however on deep passing, Cousins clearly out performs him.

- High powered offenses - Tom Brady, Josh Allen, Matthew Stafford, Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott - The QBs for the elite offenses all threw deep less than Cousins, Dak Prescott was the only one even close.  This group are all good QBs who are effective deep ball throwers, and had really strong receiving corps.  These team were all capable of throwing down field more and the fact that they did it less frequently shows that "just throw deep more" is not the approach to get to an elite offense.  However... if you were to filter to from "deep ball %" to "Deep Ball Attempts", and look at raw totals, most of these guys would filter to the top... because...

Checkdown rates
This is your 3rd down throw data that you posted here:  [OC] Lord of the R.I.N.G.S: The Fellowship of the Checkdown

I just copied it out and re-sorted by average yards to go on 3rd down rather than the raking for how often teams throw short.  



When you look at 3rd down difficulty, instead of target depth, suddenly all those great offenses filter to the top.  The only QB for an elite offense that had more difficult 3rd downs was Joe Burrow and the Bengals - and Burrow threw short of the first down marker more often that Cousins.  

The solution to having an elite offense is absolutely not "just cut it lose"; "just cut it lose" gets you Jameis Winston and the 2019 Bucs who went 7-9.  It's about setting that offense up for easy conversions and taking shots when the defense is off balance.  The Vikings were great at the deep passing game.  But the deep passing game is less than 10% of offensive plays and they stunk out loud at getting into easy to convert 3rd downs.  

The OC's were different almost every year Kirk was here. They were all bad? Maybe Kirk was the issue. All these things you and a few others say Kirk needs, in order to be a better QB, are something EVERY QB needs to be better. Manion or Mond could play this season, and be good QBs, and get as many wins in the season or post season as Kirk. Kirk is getting paid to overcome some of those problems. HE IS NOT AN elite QB, Or a top tier QB, just cause the Wilfs are afraid of their own shadow. Pay kirk what other QB who have the same amount of wins/playoff wins as kirk. That seems fair. He shouldnt be making as much as Rogers, Brady, Wilson, etc. Thats the real issue. You dont hear other coaches  say their Oline has to be great, ST be great, Defenses be great, for their team to get in the playoffs.