Getty Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins
After a 13-win season last year, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins rose to the highest ranking he’s ever received in The Athletic’s annual NFL Quarterback Tiers but is still facing dissent about whether he can carry his team to a championship.
The Athletic’s Mike Sando polled 50 NFL coaches and executives, granting them anonymity so they can provide unvarnished evaluations of the league’s quarterbacks without any backlash. Splitting 25 Tier 2 votes and 25 Tier 3 votes, Cousins took the last spot in Tier 2 for just the second time in his career, and his No. 12 ranking is the highest he’s ever landed.
However, one coach, who is among the 25 voters who favored Cousins as a Tier 2 quarterback, had some harsh criticism toward Cousins in his evaluation, saying the Vikings veteran will “probably never win a Super Bowl.”
“He is probably the guy I was torn the most on between a 2 and a 3,” an offensive coordinator who placed Cousins in Tier 2 told The Athletic. “He will probably never win a Super Bowl, but he is just a damn good player who more times than not, they are at least even, if not a little ahead, of who they are playing from a quarterback standpoint.”
The 50 league insiders included eight general managers, 10 head coaches, 15 coordinators, 10 executives, four quarterbacks coaches and three involved in coaching/analytics, according to The Athletic.
NFL Executive on Vikings QB Kirk Cousins: ‘The Guy is a Riddle’
GettyQuarterback Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings after losing to the New York Giants in the NFC Wild Card Playoff Game at U.S. Bank Stadium on January 15, 2023 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)
An anonymous executive, who vehemently pushed back against penning Cousins as a Tier 3 quarterback, admitted that Cousins is difficult to understand as a quarterback.
“People have him down in Tier 3 and I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’” an exec said, per The Athletic. “But the guy is a riddle. He plays almost flawlessly in the second half in the biggest comeback in the history of the league (against Indianapolis), which almost no one can do, and then one month later, in the playoffs, he’s got fourth-and-8 on the last play of the game and he’s hitting the checkdown five yards short of the sticks with the defender all over the receiver.”
Cousins’ eight game-winning drives last season led the league and tied the NFL record for a single season. However, his final throw to T.J. Hockenson in the playoff loss to the New York Giants in January has clouded his image of whether he can truly carry a team to a deep run in the postseason.
“He is smart, he has got leadership, he’s got command of the offense,” a defensive coordinator told The Athletic. “I’m not sure he can carry the team, even sometimes. There is something missing there, but if there was a 2.5 here, I would give him that.”
Kirk Cousins Hopes to Climb QB Rankings in 2nd Season With Kevin O’Connell
GettyJustin Jefferson of the Minnesota Vikings reacts after scoring a touchdown with teammate Kirk Cousins in the first quarter of the game against the Pittsburgh Steelersat U.S. Bank Stadium on December 09, 2021 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Cousins has been no stranger to dissent throughout his career and has used it to fuel his climb in the NFL.
But when Justin Jefferson excluded Cousins from his top-five quarterback rankings, fans had a heydey on social media.
Realistically, Cousins hasn’t proven he is among the Tier 1 quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes or Joe Burrow. But Jefferson’s honesty to a fault didn’t seem to ruffle Cousins’ feathers.
“I didn’t even see it. This is the first time hearing about it,” Cousins said July 13 on KFAN’s “Power Trip Morning Show.” “As a competitor, yeah, you always want that. People have to be honest and share what they think and I’m not going to tell somebody what they need to think and hopefully in 2024 I’ll be on his list. We’ll see what we can do this year.”
After the Netflix docuseries “Quarterback” unveiled the amount of study and work COusins put into the 2022 season, another year with the same playcaller in Kevin O’Connell where he isn’t learning on the fly could be the boon Cousins needs to catapult himself into the upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks.