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Can the Vikings win a Super Bowl with
Kirk Cousins?Yes. In the big picture, plenty of quarterbacks who are at a similar level to Cousins have won a Super Bowl.
Joe Flacco won a Super Bowl with the 2012 Ravens.
Eli Manning won two Super Bowls. Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson won Super Bowls. At the risk of sparking a quarterback debate about uninspiringly competent quarterbacks, Cousins certainly at least belongs in the discussion with those guys. An utterly compromised Peyton Manning was benched for Brock Osweiler in November of 2015 and won a Super Bowl with the Broncos three months later. Manning failed to complete 60% of his passes and threw 17 interceptions against nine touchdowns. Cousins is better than that version of Peyton Manning.
It helps to remember that Cousins does have a higher ceiling than game manager, though. After being grilled for poor play during
Minnesota's 16-6 loss to the Bears, Cousins has taken a lead role in victories over the
Giants and
Eagles. While
Dalvin Cook ran for 132 yards in the 28-10 victory over New York, the stout Philly run defense held Cook to 41 yards on 16 carries.
Alexander Mattison chipped in with a 35-yard run, but the Vikings needed a big game out of Cousins to keep up with the Eagles on Sunday.
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Kirk Cousins has completed 78.6% of his passes, averaged 11.4 yards per attempt and thrown six touchdowns to one interception over the last two games.
Outside of a stray throw or two, he had that game. Cousins went 22-of-29 passing for 333 yards and four touchdowns with one pick, which came when a pass bounced off of Diggs' chest and into the hands of Sendejo. Cousins finished the game with a 91.4
Total QBR, which was his best single-game performance as a member of the Vikings and his best start since December of 2016. The only quarterbacks with a better QBR over the past two games than Cousins are
Deshaun Watson and
Russell Wilson, and nobody has averaged more than Cousins' 11.4 yards per attempt.
Asking Cousins to keep up this level of play over the rest of the season seems unlikely, but the schedule over the next month doesn't seem particularly onerous. Before Minnesota's Week 12 bye, Cousins gets the Lions on a short week, a revenge game against Washington, a road trip against the Chiefs, a trip to face the Cowboys, and a home game against the Broncos. The only one of those teams which ranks in the top 10 in
pass defense DVOA is Kansas City, who will likely fall out after Sunday's loss to the Texans.
Every discussion of Cousins' ability seems to revolve around his three-year, $84 million contract. For the Vikings in 2019, his contract doesn't matter. It's a sunk cost. The Vikings are either going to win or lose with him in the fold. They are going to be at odds with themselves, as a front office which committed significant long-term contracts to their quarterback, tight end and top two wide receivers battles with a coach who wants to run the ball at a 1970s rate. Those issues aren't going away.
To that end, the determining factor for the Vikings is still going to be their defense. Look at those quarterbacks I mentioned in the first paragraph. They each enjoyed excellent defensive work, both in the regular season and then for a sustained stretch in the playoffs. Flacco got hot and pieced together
one of the best playoff stretches in NFL history, but these quarterbacks were generally good enough to be carried to a Super Bowl by a dominant defense. Minnesota's defense hasn't quite played at that level this season, but it is certainly good enough to get hot and piece together a three- or four-game stretch at that level if the Vikings make it into the postseason.
Yes, they are paying for more than "good enough to win with" as part of Cousins' free-agent deal, which expires after the 2020 season. It's clear that Cousins isn't going to carry them to a Super Bowl with weekly performances like what we saw on Sunday, but he's also good enough to take advantage if his defense goes supernova. If the defense doesn't dominate, Cousins isn't going to make up the difference, at least not for three games against the league's toughest teams in January and February.
