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The 2018 Kirk Cousins Megathread


Heimdallr

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On 2018-12-21 at 10:41 AM, Krauser said:

Cousins isn’t the main problem this year. The turnovers are bad, but he’s otherwise met or exceeded expectations. He’s scheme and talent dependent, but then so is basically every QB, or did you fail to notice what happened to Ryan after Shanahan left, or to Rodgers since 2015? If Cousins was in Goff’s position, the Rams would be just as good.

His contract isn’t an overpayment. He’s making a little less than Stafford and comparable money to Garoppolo. Noticeably better QBs (Rodgers, Ryan, Brees) are paid considerably more. 

Hes quite a bit better than Keenum in everything except pocket mobility. Keenum’s thrown 12 INTs (Cousins 10) and fumbled 8 times (Cousins 9) but has only lost one fumble (Cousins 7), so even the turnovers are roughly a wash there aside from the Vikings bad luck with fumble recoveries. Cousins obviously is a much, much better passer than Keenum. He costs $9M more than Keenum this year, which is about right.

There shouldn’t be too much regret with signing Cousins. Keeping Teddy was the only other viable option and even that was dependent on his knee holding up long term, which the team apparently doesn’t expect it to, and which of course hasn’t been tested yet.

The mistake in hindsight (and foresight) was trading a 1st for Bradford. Playing out the year with Hill would’ve left them a top 10 pick and a chance to draft Mahomes or Watson.

The problem with the offense this year is that JDF decided to try to make Cousins into Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers, running everything out of shotgun, and sticking with 3 WR sets despite only having 2 good receivers. It’s pretty shocking that JDF got so far away from the Eagles scheme: the run game and TEs were underused, the screens were poorly executed especially to RBs, and they couldn’t convert on short yardage.

Cousins needs to get back to the McVay/Shanahan model with zone runs from under center, frequent play action and a second TE or FB on the field. Luckily it looks like that’s what Stefanski is doing. If he’d been given the OC position in the first place, this year would’ve gone better.

 

^^ from December 21 last year

I think that holds up well, especially the first and last paragraphs. 

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Cousins is now 2nd in PFF passer grade, 2nd in passer rating, 10th in QBR, 2nd in YPA and ANY/A (in both cases trailing only Mahomes), and 1st in completion percentage over expected.

He’s also 1st in adjusted completion percentage, 1st in passer rating on deep targets, and 1st in percentage of dropbacks using play action.

He has the longest average time to throw and the highest percentage of dropbacks holding the ball longer than 2.5 seconds. He’s been under pressure on the 3rd highest percentage of dropbacks but has the 2nd highest adjusted completion percentage and 5th best passer rating under pressure. He has the best passer rating from a clean pocket, which tends to be a stable metric over a season and a accurate barometer of quality QB play.

Edited by Krauser
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3 minutes ago, Torchezim said:

Who is Kyle Brandt and what qualifies him to be an analyst? 
 

His takes are so generic and obvious imo. 

I can't stand him. If it was just Kay Adams as host and Peter Schrager doing the analysis It would be a good show.

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1 hour ago, Uncle Buck said:

 

To be fair, blitzed doesn't mean pressured.

Under pressure (from however many pass rushers), Cousins' passer rating is 92.0, 5th in the league (of the 39 QBs with at least 75 dropbacks), trailing only Wilson, Carr, Watson and Mahomes.

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40 minutes ago, Krauser said:

To be fair, blitzed doesn't mean pressured.

Under pressure (from however many pass rushers), Cousins' passer rating is 92.0, 5th in the league (of the 39 QBs with at least 75 dropbacks), trailing only Wilson, Carr, Watson and Mahomes.

Ok, that makes sense.  At the same time, if he is 5th in the league, that's not bad for a guy who has been accused of folding under pressure.  I'm still not 100% sold on him to get us to the promised land, but this is a good sign anyway.

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This is sort of the issue with averages and season stats.....Cousins was awful in 2 games....games are somewhat discrete events, yet we are looking at season stats.....I'm not sure how you fix that, no one has really figured out for baseball pitchers in a good way, and hey have way more public stats.....but Cousins' awesome play in several (many) games does not wash out the awful play in the two losses......

I have no idea how to change this....

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Kirk Cousins was named NFC offensive player of the month, after bouncing back from September with a brilliant four weeks of football. Cousins completed 78.5 percent of his passes, for 1,261 yards, 10 touchdowns and one interception in October.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/10/31/kirk-cousins-wins-nfc-offensive-player-of-month-honors/

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  • 2 weeks later...

The only thing missing from Kirk's QB play imo is the ability to drive the offense down the field in the last 2-4 minutes of the game. It's really the only area he hasn't blown us away with. A little better accuracy on his deep balls would be nice too. Everywhere he's the perfect QB. Doesn't get injured. Throws for 250 plus nearly every game. Multiple TD passes nearly every game. He's able to scramble/run outside the pocket. High accuracy on 95% of his throws. Throws hard and can launch the ball like it's going out of style. Just need some late game drives.

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