USA TODAY International Edition
Cousins knows he needs to deliver in 2019
As weeks and months have distanced him from his inaugural season in Minnesota, Kirk Cousins has gotten out in the community more.
Whether the quarterback finds himself at an area function, church gathering or the grocery store, he always runs into Vikings fans. But none of them has mentioned the elephant in the room.
“They call it ‘Minnesota nice’ for a reason,” he explained to USA TODAY. “Face-to-face, fans were always so great to me, and so great to my family.”
The Vikings’ faithful certainly could remind Cousins that his signing in the spring of 2018 was supposed to have elevated the squad that fell in the 2018 NFC Championship Game to the Super Bowl in 2019. They could chide him for the Vikings instead going 8-7-1 while missing the playoffs.
But nobody ever broaches the subject. Instead, they’re always excited to see Cousins and offer support. That almost makes it even worse.
“When I see them and they ARE so nice to me, I just feel awful that we didn’t do more last year,” the quarterback explained in a telephone conversation, hours after wrapping up another week of offseason practices. “The good news is 2019 is right around the corner. Until we can play games, you do still have that bad taste in your mouth. But hopefully I can make amends for it this coming year because it’s a fan base that’s really strong. You want to do it for them and bring home a world championship to a team that’s been so close.”
The funny thing is, although Cousins failed to deliver the anticipated deep postseason run, the quarterback — who after back-to-back franchise-tag seasons in Washington bolted for Minnesota, inking a three-year, fully guaranteed $84 million contract — didn’t play poorly in his first Vikings season.
He was top 10 in virtually every major statistical category. His 30 touchdown passes and 70.1 completion percentage both represented career highs. His passer rating (99.7) was his second best as a starter. His 10 interceptions represented a career low.
“When you’re looking at the stats, you say, ‘Hey, I played my best football,’ ” Cousins said, before adding, “But unfortunately we didn’t win.”
That’s all that matters. That’s what the Vikings brought Cousins to Minnesota to do, and that’s why he wanted to be a part of a squad brimming with talent and potential. So Cousins, in a quest to find the missing ingredient in last season, took a deeper dive into the numbers, and two key areas jumped out. A feeble average of 7.1 yards per passing attempt (23rd) and a 35.8% conversion rate on third downs (26th) revealed a lack of explosive plays and a lack of effectiveness on money downs.
A lack of explosiveness is perplexing considering who Cousins has at his disposal. In Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs, Minnesota boasts two dynamic 1,000-yard wide receivers. Kyle Rudolph is a two-time Pro Bowl tight end.
The big-play potential revealed itself early in the season. Cousins pointed to a play in Week 2 against Green Bay when one of his passes traveled 60 yards in the air, found Diggs, and then the receiver gained another 20 yards. He remembers Week 4 against the Rams when a completion to Thielen on a seam route resulted in a 50-yard touchdown.
For a variety of reasons, the Vikings couldn’t build on the early promise. Cousins confessed his film study revealed instances where he missed making game-changing pass completions by yards, feet and sometimes inches.
“That’s an emphasis to me: figuring out how to have more explosive plays. And then, you look at third downs, and specifically 3rd-and-4 to 6, we were among the worst. And if you’re going to do anything in this league, you’ve got to do better there, so I’m going back and looking at how can I be better at creating explosive plays and how can I be better on third down so we can stay on the field, because if we can really improve those areas, we should be pretty good.”
Cousins isn’t the only one trying to figure out how to improve in these categories. Offensive futility prompted coach Mike Zimmer to fire coordinator John DeFilippo and promote quarterbacks coach Kevin Stefanski to playcaller with three games left in the season. This offseason, Zimmer added seasoned offensive minds Gary Kubiak and Rick Dennison to his staff.
A merging of Stefanski’s playbook with that of Kubiak’s and Dennison’s from that duo’s time in Houston and Denver puts Cousins in an interesting position. In some regards he has familiarity thanks to Stefanski, but he’s also having to learn the elements Kubiak and Dennison bring. He recognizes some elements of the offense from his time in Washington, where for the first two years of his career he played under Kubiak’s mentor Mike Shanahan, as well as Kyle Shanahan, who served as Kubiak’s offensive coordinator in Houston. But offenses are ever-changing, so there’s plenty of elements to learn.
So Cousins’ goal is to continue to evolve just like the playbook has. He’ll do so while drawing on last year’s experiences and improved comfort both with his teammates and his surroundings.
“We didn’t meet the expectations that we wanted to,” Cousins acknowledged, “so that was a disappointment, and yet I gained confidence in a sense where you look back over the year: OK, I was moving my family, brand-new team, brand-new system, and really starting from scratch . ... Being uprooted from everything that was familiar and being planted somewhere else and still being able to produce — that taught me, ‘OK, you can do this.’ And now this year is about taking that next step.”
Proving himself as a winner is basically the one unchecked item on Cousins’ career to-do list. A 2012 fourthround pick, he has proved he’s more than a backup, and he has displayed an ability to pass at a prolific rate, having surpassed the 4,000-yard mark in each of his four seasons as a starter. But he has just one playoff appearance to his name, and Cousins is well-aware that deficiency looms large when critics compare him to his peers.
“It’s about winning to get to the playoffs, and then once you get to the playoffs, winning playoff games and ultimately winning a world championship,” Cousins admitted. “Unfortunately, that’s something I haven’t done yet. But that’s where my focus is now.”
As Cousins even more directly put it, “I want and need to be that guy.”
Because that is what the Vikings and all of those nice fans need.