Week 11: VIKINGS (5-3-1) at Bears (6-3)

[Cearbhall]

43 minutes ago, milanb said:

If all the Vikings wanted was a Stop Gap they could have kept Case Keenum and saved themselves a lot of money and cap space.

That debate is over. It might not have been the move we would have made but we need to move on with the reality that Kirk Cousins is the QB of the team. The team needs to build around him. It is going to require building an offensive line and that will cost the team defensive talent. I hope Zimmer is willing to embrace that reality.

[SotanKing]

4 hours ago, wcblack34 said:

Maybe it won’t be true if he wins a meaningful game against a meaningful opponent. But the Cousins we are seeing this year is Andy Dalton. And he’s been Andy Dalton for his career. Neither Andy Dalton nor Kirk Cousins have won anything meaningful. 

Cousins and his contract will be an albatross unless he closes out games against quality opponents and stops making stupid turnovers. 

He’s got a defense. He’s got weapons. He had an OL in Washington. The one constant is the turnovers. The excuses are wearing thin. 

Stats mean nothing without wins. 

He didn't really have ton of turnovers in 2015, 2016 seasons.. 29TD/11 INT in 2015, 25TD/ 12 INT in 2016 and he had 18 fumbles(10 recovered) in those 2 seasons...so basically had a TD/INT ratio of 2.4 and 8 fumbles (unrecovered) in entire 2 seasons...that's not ton of turnovers. The fumble count only increased last season when Redskins OL was banged up due to injuries. 

You are acting as if the teams he has been playing have some 20-30% win record. 

The idea that he puts empty stats without wins isn't just true at all...Cousins had most number of game winning drives - 4 in 2017. He also had 4 game winning drives in 2016...He didn't play well against Bears but he had good games in tough away matches against Packers, Rams...We probably could have won the game against Packers if our kicker didn't miss all the FG attempts.

Anyways, whatever I say now is just a waste of time because majority have already formed an opinion about Cousins already and it won't be changed unless we reach a SB.

[swede700]

2 minutes ago, Cearbhall said:

That debate is over. It might not have been the move we would have made but we need to move on with the reality that Kirk Cousins is the QB of the team. The team needs to build around him. It is going to require building an offensive line and that will cost the team defensive talent. I hope Zimmer is willing to embrace that reality.

I don't believe they have to sacrifice defensive talent to build the offensive line...offensive line improvement isn't going to come from free agency.  

[SotanKing]

51 minutes ago, milanb said:

If all the Vikings wanted was a Stop Gap they could have kept Case Keenum and saved themselves a lot of money and cap space.

I predict that Kirk Cousins will either take the Vikings to the Super Bowl or he will get both Zimmer and Spielman fired.

You are saying as if Case was cheap...we would have saved something like $7-8M additionally if we went with Case...nothing would have changed with that $7-8M Cousins increases the ceiling of the team and yeah he is also much better QB than Case

[SotanKing]

10 minutes ago, PrplChilPill said:

If Mahomes was in this offense, we'd all be complaining about trading up for a mediocre QB. I think we are vastly underestimating how bad the OL and coaching are, when looking at Cousins.

offensive playcalling looks like an even bigger issue rn....it's just so so dire and predictable

[VikeManDan]

Disappointing game coming off of the bye week. Unable to take Mitch down, 10 carries for 43 yards doesn't seem terrible. If kneel downs are counted as runs, I believe they are, he had 3 of those, so essentially 7 carries. I went back through the play-by-play log on ESPN and counted that Mitch had 4 runs that converted for 1st downs, 2 of those occurred on 3rd down. 

Offense was again putrid but I think credit needs to be given to the Bears defense. Hopefully Detroit can help us out Thursday and we can take care of business against the Pack on SNF and make the division a cluster again.

[wcblack34]

34 minutes ago, upriser7 said:

Anyways, whatever I say now is just a waste of time because majority have already formed an opinion about Cousins already and it won't be changed unless we reach a SB.

And you've formed an opinion that just doesn't mesh with his history. It's not just that Cousins turns the ball over, which he does, it's that he turns it over in the worst ways at the worst times. 

And as far as who Cousins has beaten: a) the 49ers who didn't look great with Garropolo, and are now racing to the #1 pick; b) the Eagles who may be the only team more disappointing than the Vikings; c) the Cardinals who are starting a rookie and looking at a top 5 pick;  d0 the Jets who were starting a rookie QB and racing to a top 5 pick; and e) the Lions, who at 4-6 represent the best team we've beaten this year. So yeah, he's only beaten teams with 20%-30% records and he played like garbage against the Bills too. 

When trailing by one score in the 4th quarter from 2015-2017, Cousins completed 62% of his passes with 8 TDs and 7 INTs for an 82.8 rating. Over that same span, Ben Roethlisberger has a 121.7 rating in those situations. Only Bradford (78.8), Dalton (78.7), Osweiler (77.1), Mariota (73.3), Tyrod Taylor (69.5), Rivers (68.4), Flacco (61.8), Keenum (59.9) and Bortles (53.5) are worse in those situations.

Again, he is who he has been. I'll take a few less stats for a lot better ball security. But history tells us we aren't going to get that from him.

[Guest]

It seems as if there is more than one school of thought on the Bears loss specifically, and the lackluster season generally.  There are those who put the struggles on cousin's shoulders and others are looking at the line, coaching, play calling, the defense, the kicking game, etc...I hate to sound like a cliché, but the struggles and losses belong to the team...not one person alone.  That being said, Cousins owns a good portion of the responsibility for the lack of effectiveness in the offense.  Don't get me wrong, I recognize that generally he has played ok.  He also has made some crucial errors at important junctures of the game...errors that at least two coaching staffs have tried to minimize.

The team has a first time offensive coordinator calling plays.  Fine...however, when do we think there should be some improvement in his scheming and play calling?  Next season?  What about this year?

The offensive line is somewhat handicapped by their coach dying before the start of the season.  But some units take a tragedy and make it their motivation to play better and form a cohesion that might have been absent before.  Why didn't that happen for the Vikings?

There have been so many big games in the Zimmer era where the team came out flat and underperformed.  Or they get out to a significant lead in the first half and seem to coast for the remainder of the game.  Both of these trends were noticeable in the playoffs last year.  When do Zimmer and company get held accountable for missing this important aspect of their jobs in a lot of important games?

If I am able to have any objectivity, then all I can say about this team is that confuse the heck out of me.  They have significant talent at every position other than offensive line, with depth to boot.  It's been this way for a number of years.  Yet, offensive line seems to be a complete mystery to the front office and the coaching staff.  When a problem is that obvious, I don't understand how it can be continually ignored.  How is New Orleans able to get the two best offensive tackles in the game to go with all their play makers, and the Vikings can't??

[SotanKing]

13 minutes ago, wcblack34 said:

And you've formed an opinion that just doesn't mesh with his history. It's not just that Cousins turns the ball over, which he does, it's that he turns it over in the worst ways at the worst times. 

And as far as who Cousins has beaten: a) the 49ers who didn't look great with Garropolo, and are now racing to the #1 pick; b) the Eagles who may be the only team more disappointing than the Vikings; c) the Cardinals who are starting a rookie and looking at a top 5 pick;  d0 the Jets who were starting a rookie QB and racing to a top 5 pick; and e) the Lions, who at 4-6 represent the best team we've beaten this year. So yeah, he's only beaten teams with 20%-30% records and he played like garbage against the Bills too. 

When trailing by one score in the 4th quarter from 2015-2017, Cousins completed 62% of his passes with 8 TDs and 7 INTs for an 82.8 rating. Over that same span, Ben Roethlisberger has a 121.7 rating in those situations. Only Bradford (78.8), Dalton (78.7), Osweiler (77.1), Mariota (73.3), Tyrod Taylor (69.5), Rivers (68.4), Flacco (61.8), Keenum (59.9) and Bortles (53.5) are worse in those situations.

Again, he is who he has been. I'll take a few less stats for a lot better ball security. But history tells us we aren't going to get that from him.

It's funny how you are ignoring the games against Packers at Lambeau and Rams at LA....in both the games he was pretty damn good...if defense didn't have it's worst game in 2 years, we probably could have gotten a result against Rams....if our kicker didn't miss FGs, then we probably could have won at Packers...thing is when he had very good games in tough conditions, defense and special teams messed up. When defense played well against Bears, Cousins didn't. It's a team game after all. Problem this season has been there have hardly been games this season where both defense and offense played good...it's either offense playing good or defense playing good.

[VikeManDan]

2 minutes ago, upriser7 said:

Problem this season has been there have hardly been games this season where both defense and offense played good...it's either offense playing good or defense playing good.

I don't think we've played a complete game yet, which is scary in both good and bad ways IMO.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, upriser7 said:

It's funny how you are ignoring the games against Packers at Lambeau and Rams at LA....

But the Vikings didn't win either of those games.  Maybe I'm wrong, but the comment posted by wcblack was addressing the observation that the Vikings haven't beaten a good team this year.  Again, the Vikings didn't beat the Rams or the Packers.

[SotanKing]

8 minutes ago, Virginia Viking said:

But the Vikings didn't win either of those games.  Maybe I'm wrong, but the comment posted by wcblack was addressing the observation that the Vikings haven't beaten a good team this year.  Again, the Vikings didn't beat the Rams or the Packers.

Again...was it Cousins fault that we didn't beat Packers, Rams? QB cannot a win an entire game on his own...He was very good in both games, Special Teams gave a TD and kicker missed 3 FGs against Packers....if not for these mistakes, that's a match we would have own. Defense was horrid against Rams...so how can you blame QB in those 2 matches? He showed that he can ball out against good teams in tough conditions.

[wcblack34]

29 minutes ago, upriser7 said:

It's funny how you are ignoring the games against Packers at Lambeau and Rams at LA....in both the games he was pretty damn good...if defense didn't have it's worst game in 2 years, we probably could have gotten a result against Rams....if our kicker didn't miss FGs, then we probably could have won at Packers...thing is when he had very good games in tough conditions, defense and special teams messed up. When defense played well against Bears, Cousins didn't. It's a team game after all. Problem this season has been there have hardly been games this season where both defense and offense played good...it's either offense playing good or defense playing good.

And top shelf QBs can carry a team when the defense doesn't. See: Brady, Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Mahomes, Wentz, Goff, Wilson.

Cousins apparently needs a great defense, weapons, AND an offensive line to be great. At least that's according to the defenders in these parts. At some point, you have to look at the common denominator: Kirk Cousins. 

I'm not ignoring anything. Those games were losses. Period. He seems to get all the credit when we win, but no blame when we lose. Weird. 

[wcblack34]

18 minutes ago, upriser7 said:

Again...was it Cousins fault that we didn't beat Packers, Rams? QB cannot a win an entire game on his own...He was very good in both games, Special Teams gave a TD and kicker missed 3 FGs against Packers....if not for these mistakes, that's a match we would have own. Defense was horrid against Rams...so how can you blame QB in those 2 matches? He showed that he can ball out against good teams in tough conditions.

Add great Kicker and ST to the growing list of things that if he only had ...

[wcblack34]

Cousins excuses in this thread so far:

Defense plays crappy 

Kicker misses kicks

ST gives up TD

OL sucks

 

At least we aren't blaming Thielen and Diggs yet