Kirk Cousins is just NOT a big game quarterback

[The negotiator]

I’m surprised by the number of people in the game chat and this thread that are saying Cousins is “broken”

IMO he didn’t break he was just never “fixed”. This is exactly what his track record has been since the redskins. Good against bad teams, pads his stats in garbage time, and then absolutely crumbles against good teams and in pressure situations. Unfortunately the only ones who couldn’t see this were Rick, Zim, and some fans wearing purple colored glasses.

To paraphrase the late great Denny Green - Cousins is who we thought he was

Oh really, I’ll give you Cousins could have played better, but I can’t stand reading some of these posts anymore.
He holds on to the ball too long....tell me how long do you have to hold the ball for a play to develop when you are rushing four and dropping seven into coverage. The Bears beat the crap out of our O line. Reiff is a disaster, and the rest of the line didn’t fare any better. Do you think Cousins forgot to throw the football. With seven back in coverage and that rush, he didn’t have a chance. The only thing that worked was the one drive looking like a two minute drill. How did our running game look? How did the coaches adjust to the relentless pressure? I’m not a Cousins apologist, but my eyes don’t lie. There was plenty of blame to go around yesterday. I’m curious how much input or influence Kubiak had yesterday. Stefanski is over his head and drowning.

[StumpHunter]

1 TD drive and 72 rushing yards is not close to 3+ TD drives and 100+ rushing yards. The D was not the problem yesterday.

OK, I give up.

You're right - the Vikings defense was superb yesterday. Outstanding. Heck, maybe they can improve further if they give the Giants 40 minutes of possession in the upcoming game and maybe give the Viking offense 2 possessions in the first *and* second halves next week.

As long as other parts of the stat line look OK, that's fine then. Dominant defense all the way.

The offense had 10 drives yesterday, the average is 11 per game. Things evened out in the second half and the D gave the offense a chance to get back in it.

It wasn't flawless or "superb" but it was at least good and it met the standards that you yourself gave it before the game by quite a bit.

[StumpHunter]

I’m surprised by the number of people in the game chat and this thread that are saying Cousins is “broken”

IMO he didn’t break he was just never “fixed”. This is exactly what his track record has been since the redskins. Good against bad teams, pads his stats in garbage time, and then absolutely crumbles against good teams and in pressure situations. Unfortunately the only ones who couldn’t see this were Rick, Zim, and some fans wearing purple colored glasses.

To paraphrase the late great Denny Green - Cousins is who we thought he was

Oh really, I’ll give you Cousins could have played better, but I can’t stand reading some of these posts anymore.
He holds on to the ball too long....tell me how long do you have to hold the ball for a play to develop when you are rushing four and dropping seven into coverage. The Bears beat the crap out of our O line. Reiff is a disaster, and the rest of the line didn’t fare any better. Do you think Cousins forgot to throw the football. With seven back in coverage and that rush, he didn’t have a chance. The only thing that worked was the one drive looking like a two minute drill. How did our running game look? How did the coaches adjust to the relentless pressure? I’m not a Cousins apologist, but my eyes don’t lie. There was plenty of blame to go around yesterday. I’m curious how much input or influence Kubiak had yesterday. Stefanski is over his head and drowning.

Every QB has bad games, and a lot have them against this Bear's D. If this were the exception to how Cousins plays against good teams people would be giving him a pass for this game.

Unfortunately, Cousins has rarely shown he is capable of anything other than what he did yesterday when playing good competition, especially in his time as a Viking. When a QB hae the reputation of coming up small in big games and the QB comes up small in a big game, people are going to blame the QB. Justifiably they will blame him.

What I don't get, is how people can still defend him when he has done NOTHING to justify being defended.

[VikingLord]

OK, I give up.

You're right - the Vikings defense was superb yesterday. Outstanding. Heck, maybe they can improve further if they give the Giants 40 minutes of possession in the upcoming game and maybe give the Viking offense 2 possessions in the first *and* second halves next week.

As long as other parts of the stat line look OK, that's fine then. Dominant defense all the way.

The offense had 10 drives yesterday, the average is 11 per game. Things evened out in the second half and the D gave the offense a chance to get back in it.

It wasn't flawless or "superb" but it was at least good and it met the standards that you yourself gave it before the game by quite a bit.

You're right - I predicted total failure by the defense and what we saw was just partial failure.

But the end result is the same.

Hey, on the bright side I expect the defense will look a lot better against the Giants next week. That is, before they look largely the same against Wentz and the Eagles the week after that.

[StumpHunter]

The offense had 10 drives yesterday, the average is 11 per game. Things evened out in the second half and the D gave the offense a chance to get back in it.

It wasn't flawless or "superb" but it was at least good and it met the standards that you yourself gave it before the game by quite a bit.

You're right - I predicted total failure by the defense and what we saw was just partial failure.

But the end result is the same.

Hey, on the bright side I expect the defense will look a lot better against the Giants next week. That is, before they look largely the same against Wentz and the Eagles the week after that.

I would be good with the Vikings D holding every opponent to 13 from here on out. You wouldn't be?

[The negotiator]

Oh really, I’ll give you Cousins could have played better, but I can’t stand reading some of these posts anymore.
He holds on to the ball too long....tell me how long do you have to hold the ball for a play to develop when you are rushing four and dropping seven into coverage. The Bears beat the crap out of our O line. Reiff is a disaster, and the rest of the line didn’t fare any better. Do you think Cousins forgot to throw the football. With seven back in coverage and that rush, he didn’t have a chance. The only thing that worked was the one drive looking like a two minute drill. How did our running game look? How did the coaches adjust to the relentless pressure? I’m not a Cousins apologist, but my eyes don’t lie. There was plenty of blame to go around yesterday. I’m curious how much input or influence Kubiak had yesterday. Stefanski is over his head and drowning.

Every QB has bad games, and a lot have them against this Bear's D. If this were the exception to how Cousins plays against good teams people would be giving him a pass for this game.

Unfortunately, Cousins has rarely shown he is capable of anything other than what he did yesterday when playing good competition, especially in his time as a Viking. When a QB hae the reputation of coming up small in big games and the QB comes up small in a big game, people are going to blame the QB. Justifiably they will blame him.

What I don't get, is how people can still defend him when he has done NOTHING to justify being defended.

Stump, I’m talking specifically about yesterday’s game. He can throw for 4000-4500 yds a year since he became a starter, so we know he can throw. What do you think about my other points I brought up? I can easily point to the Packer game and say it was on him for that last throw. I don’t have any problem saying when he makes a bad play. But to lay it on him because of his track record Is unfair.
It’s like Kirk says “ a qb gets too much credit when the team wins, and too much blame when they lose.” This team will be an 8-8 or 9-7 team unless they come up with a better offensive scheme against teams with really good defensive front fours. Our coaches ability to adjust on the fly just isn’t there.

[VikingLord]

You're right - I predicted total failure by the defense and what we saw was just partial failure.

But the end result is the same.

Hey, on the bright side I expect the defense will look a lot better against the Giants next week. That is, before they look largely the same against Wentz and the Eagles the week after that.

I would be good with the Vikings D holding every opponent to 13 from here on out. You wouldn't be?

First of all, the defense gave up 16.

Second of all, holding every opponent to even 13 points from here on out isn't good if the offense can't score more than 6. So my short answer to your hypothetical is "it depends".

I really wish I could see yesterday's defensive performance as a success like you do. It was not a good performance, not for the defensive talent the Vikings have and not against a hobbled Bear offense.

[StumpHunter]

I would be good with the Vikings D holding every opponent to 13 from here on out. You wouldn't be?

First of all, the defense gave up 16.

Second of all, holding every opponent to even 13 points from here on out isn't good if the offense can't score more than 6. So my short answer to your hypothetical is "it depends".

I really wish I could see yesterday's defensive performance as a success like you do. It was not a good performance, not for the defensive talent the Vikings have and not against a hobbled Bear offense.

Defense gave up 13. 3 came on a drive when the defense moved the Bears back 5 yards. I am not going to blame them for those 3, but you feel free too, since 16 is still a good day by reasonable standards.

[Pondering Her Percy]

The defense did *nothing* to alter the flow of the Bear offense with Daniels at QB. No pressure. The DBs played their usual cover packages. No jumping routes. No anticipation. Nothing to make the Bears think twice about anything. Daniels was even quoted as saying he felt like he was in practice running the scout team! That said by the backup QB for the Chicago Bears!

I'm sure Daniels didn't mean that as an insult, but how any self-respecting defensive coach or player couldn't take a statement like that as the ultimate insult is beyond me.

Anyone who thinks the Vikings seriously have a good defense this year needs their eyes checked, especially given the continuity and veteran makeup of this group. After being together and in the league for so long, they have a disturbing lack of presence about them. They play as if there is a written script and don't deviate from it.

You can't keep moving the goal post:

The wager will be this:

I think the defense lays another egg against the Bears in Chicago. It will be similar to what we saw against the Packers. It might not happen right away in the game, but against the vaunted Mitchell Trubisky-led offensive juggernaut that is the 2019 Bears offense, this Vikings defense will surrender another 21+ points and 100+ yards rushing.

I also predict Cousins will blow it again a few times in that game, probably with another fumble and a pick or two, so he won't be blameless either.

But after that game, if the defense surrenders 3 or more TDs to that offense, you come on here and state you were wrong to blame Cousins for the Packers loss and admit the defense isn't as great as you thought.

For my part, I'll be more than happy to acknowledge I was wrong about the defense if they shut down Trubisky and the Bears on the road.

Not even close to 3 TDs and 100+ rushing yards given up, but they are still bad because now they "didn't alter the flow of the game"? How are they supposed to pick off the QB when all they are throwing are a bunch of short dump offs after the first drive?

I get that they lost their starting QB, but guess what? Daniel is a better QB than Trubiskey most Sundays.

Go to the Texans and Cowboys message boards and read what they are saying about their defenses. Two teams that gave up a similar amount of points to backups, who lost because their offenses struggled. Those fans are not talking about how bad their defense were, they are talking about how their offenses squandered great games by the defense, yet here we are blaming the D again.

No the problem is you are so use to throwing the blame at one person and one person only....#8. You dont want to blame the defense. You find ways to say they played well. Just so the attention can be pulled back onto #8. And please dont sit there and say "we're blaming the D again". TWICE this defense has had awful performances. Once vs. GB where they gave up 3 TDs from the start and yesterday. If you somehow think that those were good defensive performances then I'm starting to think you're on here to simply hate on Cousins. Because now you're just downright refusing to look elsewhere.

Sure, you put some blame on the OL, which I TOLD YOU was still not good in pass protection. But what do you respond with? How well we held up Oaklands pass rush (which is zero accomplishment becausethey are awful) and how Cousins was holding the ball too long. You even resorted to saying the Raiders sacked Pat Mahomes twice (like that has any relevance whatsoever). You knew the OL was the focus so you had to revert back to saying #8 was the problem. Same here. You have your "Cousins sucks" blinders on and now that defense is getting some blame, you're dumbing yourself down to trying to defend them in one of the worst performances I've seen out of them in a long time. And I dont even blame the players as much as I do Zim. The players themselves werent making as many mistakes as Zim was.

But seriously, you're defending that defense yesterday? Trying to bring up the Texans and Cowboys? This defense couldnt get off the field. We had two possession in the ENTIRE first half!! But it's the offenses fault because we didnt score on those whopping two drives we had? One we punted and the other Diggs fumbled. Did Kirk cause that too? That would have put us on the Chicago 34 yard line.

No different than you defending this OL's pass blocking last week? Trying to dig for any stat you could to say "nope, Kirk did this it's his fault, the OL isnt that bad". No. The OL cant fricken pass block like I said. Kirk is under center way too often like I said. You're the only one sitting here defending this defense for their performance. STOP looking at the 16 points. That literally tells nothing. It's such an "on the surface" argument by you. It's the only string you have to hold onto so you're going to excessively push your point like you already have. Just like you were the only one on here defending the OL saying they are a better pass blocking team now. No, the fricken defense played terrible and the OL is bad at pass blocking. Period. I dont care about any other teams or what they do or who sacked what QB. Cousins had his moments this year, no doubting that. But quit hunting for garbage just so you can further blame Cousins. It's obvious and pathetic to be quite honest.

[CharVike]

1 TD drive and 72 rushing yards is not close to 3+ TD drives and 100+ rushing yards. The D was not the problem yesterday.

OK, I give up.

You're right - the Vikings defense was superb yesterday. Outstanding. Heck, maybe they can improve further if they give the Giants 40 minutes of possession in the upcoming game and maybe give the Viking offense 2 possessions in the first *and* second halves next week.

As long as other parts of the stat line look OK, that's fine then. Dominant defense all the way.

We faced a backup bum playing QB. The guy marched down the field as if it was a scrimmage. He said the same thing. To me that's a major problem. We were handed a tremendous break. I'm not saying he is a great QB but he has had some success against our D. Our D needed to make a statement and take the game over. I know it's not easy but to beat them in their house that is how you have to play. The Packers gave Zim and our D guys the blueprint. They didn't look at it or we lack the talent. I'm not an expert but I expected a better performance from our D. But I've said that before. But to think our D wasn't a problem really don't understand the game. I thought we had some pressure. 1 sack. That don't cut it.

[Crax]

No different than you defending this OL's pass blocking last week? Trying to dig for any stat you could to say "nope, Kirk did this it's his fault, the OL isnt that bad". No. The OL cant fricken pass block like I said.

Here's a fun O-Line stat

Sam Monson
@PFF_Sam
Garrett Bradbury has allowed 13 total pressures in 4 games.

Rodney Hudson allowed 5 total in 2018.

He's on course to allow 15 more than any C in football did last year.

Kirk wasn't good, the defense wasn't great, but our O-Line still really really sucks

[StumpHunter]

You can't keep moving the goal post:



Not even close to 3 TDs and 100+ rushing yards given up, but they are still bad because now they "didn't alter the flow of the game"? How are they supposed to pick off the QB when all they are throwing are a bunch of short dump offs after the first drive?

I get that they lost their starting QB, but guess what? Daniel is a better QB than Trubiskey most Sundays.

Go to the Texans and Cowboys message boards and read what they are saying about their defenses. Two teams that gave up a similar amount of points to backups, who lost because their offenses struggled. Those fans are not talking about how bad their defense were, they are talking about how their offenses squandered great games by the defense, yet here we are blaming the D again.

No the problem is you are so use to throwing the blame at one person and one person only....#8. You dont want to blame the defense. You find ways to say they played well. Just so the attention can be pulled back onto #8. And please dont sit there and say "we're blaming the D again". TWICE this defense has had awful performances. Once vs. GB where they gave up 3 TDs from the start and yesterday. If you somehow think that those were good defensive performances then I'm starting to think you're on here to simply hate on Cousins. Because now you're just downright refusing to look elsewhere.

Sure, you put some blame on the OL, which I TOLD YOU was still not good in pass protection. But what do you respond with? How well we held up Oaklands pass rush (which is zero accomplishment becausethey are awful) and how Cousins was holding the ball too long. You even resorted to saying the Raiders sacked Pat Mahomes twice (like that has any relevance whatsoever). You knew the OL was the focus so you had to revert back to saying #8 was the problem. Same here. You have your "Cousins sucks" blinders on and now that defense is getting some blame, you're dumbing yourself down to trying to defend them in one of the worst performances I've seen out of them in a long time. And I dont even blame the players as much as I do Zim. The players themselves werent making as many mistakes as Zim was.

But seriously, you're defending that defense yesterday? Trying to bring up the Texans and Cowboys? This defense couldnt get off the field. We had two possession in the ENTIRE first half!! But it's the offenses fault because we didnt score on those whopping two drives we had? One we punted and the other Diggs fumbled. Did Kirk cause that too? That would have put us on the Chicago 34 yard line.

No different than you defending this OL's pass blocking last week? Trying to dig for any stat you could to say "nope, Kirk did this it's his fault, the OL isnt that bad". No. The OL cant fricken pass block like I said. Kirk is under center way too often like I said. You're the only one sitting here defending this defense for their performance. STOP looking at the 16 points. That literally tells nothing. It's such an "on the surface" argument by you. It's the only string you have to hold onto so you're going to excessively push your point like you already have. Just like you were the only one on here defending the OL saying they are a better pass blocking team now. No, the fricken defense played terrible and the OL is bad at pass blocking. Period. I dont care about any other teams or what they do or who sacked what QB. Cousins had his moments this year, no doubting that. But quit hunting for garbage just so you can further blame Cousins. It's obvious and pathetic to be quite honest.

We had 10 possessions in that game and scored on one. That is why the team lost.

What do you suppose the record is of teams who only score on one possession?

How about of teams who's defense holds the opposition to 13?

One is a negative, the other is a positive, yet we focus on the positive as a place for improvement? Bizarre.

[Pondering Her Percy]

Every QB has bad games, and a lot have them against this Bear's D. If this were the exception to how Cousins plays against good teams people would be giving him a pass for this game.

Unfortunately, Cousins has rarely shown he is capable of anything other than what he did yesterday when playing good competition, especially in his time as a Viking. When a QB hae the reputation of coming up small in big games and the QB comes up small in a big game, people are going to blame the QB. Justifiably they will blame him.

What I don't get, is how people can still defend him when he has done NOTHING to justify being defended.

Stump, I’m talking specifically about yesterday’s game. He can throw for 4000-4500 yds a year since he became a starter, so we know he can throw. What do you think about my other points I brought up? I can easily point to the Packer game and say it was on him for that last throw. I don’t have any problem saying when he makes a bad play. But to lay it on him because of his track record Is unfair.
It’s like Kirk says “ a qb gets too much credit when the team wins, and too much blame when they lose.” This team will be an 8-8 or 9-7 team unless they come up with a better offensive scheme against teams with really good defensive front fours. Our coaches ability to adjust on the fly just isn’t there.

Exactly. Cousins didnt just forget how to throw a football or somehow become wildly inaccurate. Like I said before, this offense is now becoming the opposite of Flips. Too much run vs too little pass. I begged to run the ball last year and now it's an overwhelming amount and we look like we dont know how to pass a football.

Pass Under Flip- 13th
Pass Under Stef/Kub- 31st

Run Under Flip- 30th
Run Under Stef/Kub- 3rd

.....one-dimensional offenses

Flip and Stefanski/Kub are complete opposites of each other that have put too much time into one aspect of the offense and not enough in the other. Guys can blame Cousins, the OL, or whatever all you want. Theee single biggest change that happened to this team compared to 2017 was the loss of Pat Shurmur

And just to throw this in here.....

Run under Shurmur- 7th
Pass under Shurmur- 11th

................B.A.L.A.N.C.E.


Like, does it honestly make sense that in 2018 we were 13th in passing and now all of the sudden we're 31st?? When we have the same QB, same top 2 WRs, same TE plus a good rookie, slightly different OL (neither being good). And guys want to blame Cousins? And play dumb like Cousins isnt a good passer now when he has been his whole career. Zimmer has drastically failed at finding an offensive coordinator that can do his job and do it effectively other than Pat Shurmur. Turner wasnt it, Flip wasnt it and looks like Stefanski isnt it.

But yeah, screw Kirk Cousins. He's where the blame goes.....give me a break. There is such a bigger picture to all this that some of you are failing to see. Instead you sit in front of your TV on Sundays with a composition notebook taking notes on what Kirk doesnt do well, recognizing what else goes wrong on the team and drafts up reasons that #8 is still to blame. I'm almost at the point where I no longer want Cousins on the team because he has consumed so much of this board with argument, defending, finger pointing, etc. Obviously not his fault but for some of our own sanity that's how I sometimes feel. It's the apologists (also known as guys that look at the big picture) vs. the haters. There could be a thread on here about the 1970 Minnesota Vikings and somehow Cousins name will be brought up in that and what he did wrong since he's been here. It's baffling

[Mothman]

We had 10 possessions in that game and scored on one. That is why the team lost.

What do you suppose the record is of teams who only score on one possession?

How about of teams who's defense holds the opposition to 13?

One is a negative, the other is a positive, yet we focus on the positive as a place for improvement? Bizarre.

It's not bizarre and they gave up 16, not 13.

Points allowed is a limited measure of defensive performance. As Mike has pointed out, the Vikings defense struggled to get off the field. That had a significant impact on the game. The Bears dominated time of possession, controlled the line of scrimmage and even though they were settling for FGs most of the game, moved the ball effectively.

The offense's inability to score is reason #1 the Vikings lost, not the only reason. The defense didn't get the job done either. Both units need to improve.

[Mothman]

But yeah, screw Kirk Cousins. He's where the blame goes.....give me a break. There is such a bigger picture to all this that some of you are failing to see. Instead you sit in front of your TV on Sundays with a composition notebook taking notes on what Kirk doesnt do well, recognizing what else goes wrong on the team and drafts up reasons that #8 is still to blame. I'm almost at the point where I no longer want Cousins on the team because he has consumed so much of this board with argument, defending, finger pointing, etc. Obviously not his fault but for some of our own sanity that's how I sometimes feel. It's the apologists (also known as guys that look at the big picture) vs. the haters. There could be a thread on here about the 1970 Minnesota Vikings and somehow Cousins name will be brought up in that and what he did wrong since he's been here. It's baffling

If criticism of Cousins baffles you, I don't know what the heck you're watching. You raised some good points about the coordinators but Cousins was awful yesterday and he was pretty bad in the loss to GB too. Yesterday, he continually threw inaccurate passes, coughed the ball up more than once and wilted under pressure. Sure, he made some good throws too but he did not, by any reasonable measure of QB performance, play well. He deserves criticism.