Extend Cousins or ... ?

Once someone gets down to the points per drive argument I know no matter I say it won't matter.  See, every single time someone even remotely defends Cousins and brings up another reason why the team didn't win, the goal posts are moved.  Tell, us, what was Cousin's points per drive in Washington?  (Ill assume if you don't post right away, you don't know it and will have to look it up.)  Since you are arguing the point, you must know.  What was Stafford's point per drive in Detroit vs what he did in LA last year.    And even more important, since you brought up the great Keenum, hero of 2017,  What is his point per drive since he left MN?  And why isn't he starting for another team? 

For the record, in 2017 MN PPD was 2.10   For 2022, 2.12 PPD.  Pretty sure, 2.12 is higher than 2.10   And for the heck of it, lets through in PPD on defense.

2017, MN PPD on defense 1.40    2022, PPD on defense,  2.13. 

So, all of you that keep this discussion going about Cousins and other QB's with Points per drive, why is it that you don't include the points per drive that their defense gave up?  I mean it's right there on the same page.  Oh I know, it doesn't validate your argument about Cousins.   After all, it's a team game. 

So, the defense doesn't matter if the team wins or losses. Only what the QB does. Cousins played better than Keenum, and yet you blasted him because in 2017 the Vikings were 8th in points per drive compared to this year. Funny how you haven't addressed the issue of how Cousins had a larger point per drive than Keenum did. The defensive point per drive has just as much meaning to the team as the offensive. Go back and look at New England's defensive ppd for the last 22 years and explain how that didn't matter to winning. Better yet, look at the defensive ppd of any team that won multiple super bowls over several years and explain why it has no value on a team winning or losing. Remember when Chicago won the Super Bowl? It was the ppd or the QB talked about. Nope, it was their defense. Why is that? Same with Baltimore. How about the 2015 Broncos? Was it Manning. or was it the defense?

For the 20 years that San Fran dominated, no one talks about the 17.9 ppg their defense averaged during that 20-year span. Nope, they talk of Montana and Young, and Rice. When people talk about Lombardi in Green Bay they don't talk about the 15.4 ppg on defense for those years. Nope, the talk about Lombardi and Starr. Now, When people talk about the Vikings in the '60s under Grant, what do they talk about? Grant and the defense. Grant's defense averaged 16.5 ppg during his tenure Oh the QBs will get mentioned but as an afterthought. Why is that? Well, it's simple, they didn't win a Super Bowl so their offense couldn't have been that good, Much less the QBs being any good.

Here are a couple of numbers for you. In the 10 years Montana played in San Fran, they averaged 25.5 ppg on offense. In the last 3 years, Cousins has averaged 25.6 ppg on offense. But, San Frans defense only gave up 16.6 ppg on defense while in MN the last three years they have given up 26.6 ppg on defense. Now, tell us, how well do you think Montana would look if his defense was giving up 10 more points a game over his career? How much better would Cousins look if his defense was only giving up 16.6 ppg? But what the defense does, doesn't matter to how the QB is playing, right? Or how the QB looks. Because all that matters is PPD and wins and losses by the QB. Nothing else matters. That is the only way to determine the quality of a QB.

Detroit had the 4th best ppd on offense this year. What did that get them? It didn't even get them in the playoffs. I wonder why. Maybe it was the ppd on defense that mattered. Nope, could it be? The fact is, that out of the ten worst teams on ppd on defense only 1 made the playoffs. The Vikings. But, that doesn't matter because Cousins' ppd isn't high enough. Remember last year when Cousin's ppd was 2.34 and everyone was talking about it? Yeah, neither do I. A QB needs to overcome the ppd given up on defense to be considered a top QB. The Raiders had a better ppd on offense than the Vikings, why weren't they in the playoffs? Oh yeah, that ppd on defense came in third to Chicago and AZ. But they dumped their QB.

And let me make this perfectly clear. This isn't a defense of Cousins, it's a criticism of how people look at QBs in general. Way too much of the team's success/failure is laid at the feet of QB's. I have yet to hear one person claim Brady would have won 6 rings in Detroit. Or Montana 4.

I didn't leave anyone off the list. I was replying to the post by Coller, which is what I quoted.


And how do you think those defenses were built?? With Mahomes, Burrow, Allen all on rookie contracts. The Tampa defense was built with Winston on a rookie contract.
The only outlier is GB.

And where did you get the defensive PPG from? Is it just the regular season, just the playoffs??

Btw, since some people insist on using raw defense PPG numbers and comparing them over decades (which is misleading given that the league is much more offensively-minded nowadays), let's take a look at defensive PPG league rankings (a much more reliable indicator) throughout Cousins' career, along with his record:

2015: 17th, 9-7
2016: 19th, 8-7
2017: 27th, 7-9
2018: 9th, 8-7-1
2019: 5th, 10-6
2020: 29th, 7-9
2021: 24th, 8-9
2022: 28th, 13-4

Anyone see a correlation here between defense ranking and Kirk's record? If so please step forward and show your work. The reality is that it's all but meaningless, as the above numbers clearly show. So all this hoopla about how it's the defense's fault and he has nothing to do with it collapse under the slightest bit of analysis.

No, I never said that as I keep saying lol. You are just arguing strawman points despite me clearly saying otherwise and admitting the defense is a problem repeatedly. I did address that cousins and keenum had almost the same ppg, you ignored my question about it lolol you can’t be serious.

This is exactly what I mean when I responded to that other poster. It’s not the people wanting to move on from cousins that are the “whackos”. The two people that have responded since haven’t even acknowledged what I have been saying while making up things I never did for me. It’s insanity. The cousins defenders and those that continue to push for extending him are the ones that continue not to be rational every year. That this team isn’t ready to compete due to a lot of areas of need like on defense is part of the reason moving on from cousins is such an obvious choice. As I said it’s not all his fault but everything I laid out about him can still be an issue (he’s a portion of the problem even if not the biggest). This has been explained to people many times over by more than just me but so many fans just seem extremely defensive of cousins and a path that has clearly proven not to work at this point.

And while your numbers are good, what they don't show is how many games or the percentage of the games that the QB had those defensive numbers against them. So let's take your first two columns. Because all QB's do well in that category. Tell us what percentage of the QB games were played where the defense only gave up 20 points or less. Because if you have 3 QB that played 100 games and 2 had defenses that only gave up 20 points in 80 of those games and one had a defense that gave up 20 in 40 of those games, that one QB isn't going to look as good.

It looks like this. Take 3 QBs that win games under 20 points at a rate of, .950. Now, how many games they actually win depends on how of those under 20-point games they get to play. See, it matters not only that they win those games, but how many did they actually have.


       games
0-20   under 20  Wins
0.950 80   76
0.950 60   57
0.950 40   38


I said something very similar in the Cousins isn't the problem or the solution thread. The big problem is that people will then espouse some ridiculously stupid ideas like trading the farm for Watson and signing him to a deal that makes Cousins look cheap.... or Wilson... or Rodgers.... Jackson will be next. Someone is going to regret that deal. The Bills will be regretting Allen shortly. You're already seeing cracks there, and they are going to start being much more noticeable next season. After all, it's the QB stupid, and they will massively overpay. I can almost guarantee that someone or both are going to massively regret the Burrow/Lawrence extensions. I can pretty much guarantee that if Hurts gets extended that the Eagles will regret it as well. He's a product of that line, not his talent. Mahomes, I'll grant is probably the one true HOFer in that group, but even at that cost it hamstrings his team pretty significantly, and a big reason why he lost the SB last year was a poor OL. It's why KC went out and beefed it up significantly. Mahomes's contract is also saved more because KC's front office has apparently cracked the code for drafting or is insanely lucky. I'm not sure which, but at this point, it's really hard not to notice their ability to consistently outperform the rest of the NFL in the draft.

I'll grant that QB is the most important position on the field, but sometimes people sound like old school baseball fans with pitcher wins and that garbage. It's still very much a team game. And as I said in the other thread, Brady is the GOAT not because of his QB stats, but because he was smart enough to not take top dollar to put a better team around him... that and his health. He was rarely ever top 5 at his position any season. To your point, Brady doesn't get 6 SBs on very many teams, and when he unretires (Danchat, call that a 2023 PPA), there won't be very many places he chooses to play, but he will choose to play for a complete team that's a QB away like SF... The real question is if he's cooked at this point.