I watched it and I agree with you. Cousins missed some stuff.S197 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 2:19 am The stats without watching the game erroneously indicate the Vikings weren’t running much. In actuality they were running, it’s just the offense as a whole wasn’t doing much. And credit to SF for some of that, there’s no denying they are an elite defense. But plays were there, they were just missed. Like I said, go look at Rosenfels breaking down tape on Twitter. That deep cross was open multiple times and Cousins flat out missed it. That’s not me armchairing, that’s a former NFL QB publicly saying you can’t miss plays like that in the playoffs. And he’s absolutely right.
The thing that bothers me about that, though, is what the heck are the Vikings doing when the offense comes off after a series and they're looking at the screen shots of that series? Don't the coaches see that? Wouldn't Cousins see that too? As good as the 49ers defense was that game, they seemed to have figured something out about the Vikings offense that the Vikings overall couldn't overcome no matter how they adjusted (I assume they did adjust). Ditto for the 2nd game against the Packers last year too. Whatever the Packers did in that game likewise seemed like something the offense couldn't adjust to.
Does all of that fall on Cousins?
I think here the issue comes down to Cousins ability to improvise and extend plays. He's not good at that, certainly not at a level of a Mahomes, Favre, or a Rodgers. Whatever the 49ers and Packers figured out, the Vikings offensively weren't able to overcome in terms of on-field adjustments. They shut everything the Vikings tried to do down. In games like that, someone has to step up and be a superhero, and at least in those games Cousins wasn't able to. Neither was Cook, and neither, for that matter, was the defense as both the Packers and 49ers pretty much ran all over them.