Vikings Twilight Zone: Imagining a world where they did everything for Kirk Cousins

What if the Vikings had truly gone all-in from the start of 2018?

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I’ve been watching a lot of Twilight Zone on Netflix lately and I’ve noticed there is a theme that runs through many of the episodes: People are always landing on some type of cursed item that allows them to either change the past or know the future.

Two specific examples come to mind from Season 2. In the episode “Back There,” a man goes back in time to the day Lincoln was shot and tries to save the president. Long story short, he isn’t able to save Lincoln but when he returns to the 1960s, he realizes even his presence in the past had a butterfly effect that caused another man to be wildly rich.

There’s another one called “A Most Unusual Camera,” where a group of petty thieves finds a camera that takes pictures of the future. They use it to gamble but eventually fight over the camera, leading to their demise.

Both of these Rod Serling classics sparked a thought about the Minnesota Vikings’ current situation.

If they could time travel back to the day after they signed Kirk Cousins to a three-year, $84 million contract in 2018, what would they do differently? And if they could have taken a picture of the 2020 season back in February, what would they change in order for this year’s disaster 1-5 to be avoided?

The same answer comes to mind with both questions: Give Cousins more.

Our Vikings Twilight Zone episode begins with the bizarre circumstances that led to the Vikings landing in the NFC Championship in 2017.

Mike Zimmer’s team ranked as the No. 1 defense in the NFL that year but the league saw a particularly bizarre downtick in quarterback play. The league-wide quarterback rating sunk from 89.3 to 86.9 in one year with injuries to star QBs (a la Aaron Rodgers) and a number of franchises in between signal callers.

The Vikings beat Brett Hundley twice, rookie Mitch Trubisky twice, DeShone Kizer and fading Joe Flacco and Andy Dalton.

That isn’t to say they didn’t earn it and beat some good offenses in 2017, only that the circumstances were favorable to win with a defense-first approach for that season.

The following year, QB rating shot back up to 92.9 and this year it’s up to an all-time high of 94.1. To put that in other terms: The average quarterback’s QB rating went from David Garrard’s career mark to Kurt Warner’s between 2017 and the present.

So when the Vikings signed Cousins, they did so under the pretense that they could continue to roll out the best defense in the NFL, especially because they were returning nearly every player on the defensive side. He was thought to be the final piece to the puzzle and the answer — unlike Case Keenum — if the defense faltered, as it had in the NFC Championship game against Philadelphia.

But Cousins entered his first season as a Viking with the interior of his offensive line made up of journeyman backup Tom Compton, journeyman backup Brett Jones and Mike Remmers, a right tackle giving guard a try for the first time.

He also stepped under center in an 11-personnel offense (three receivers, one tight end, one running back) with first-round bust Laquon Treadwell as his No. 3 option.

At the time, there was certainly evidence to point us toward the impact of supporting casts on quality quarterbacks. With a few more years in the rearview mirror, however, we can truly see how circumstances have dictated the success of similar QBs in talent to Cousins.

Here’s a look at Cousins’s individual performance in 2018 and 2019 compared to QBs who represented the NFC in the Super Bowl from 2016-2019 and their supporting casts on the offensive line and depth receiver versus the Vikings in 2018 and 2019:

You can see that Cousins wasn’t quite on the level of Ryan’s MVP 2016 season but he was as good by most measures in 2019 as Foles, Goff and Garoppolo in the years they reached the Super Bowl. But the Vikings’ pass blocking, pressure rate and yards by their No. 3 receiver were nowhere close in most cases to the teams that went to the Super Bowl.

Cousins has some similar strengths and weaknesses to the recent SB representative QBs. None of those QBs are mobile. They would all mostly be described as “system quarterbacks” and all of them have had peaks and valleys to their performances over the years. None would fall under the Mahomes/Brady category of untouchables. Yet at their peaks, with everything around them humming, the others could reach the pinnacle of the sport.

It has always been the case that passing success has correlated with overall success — heck, even the Purple People Eaters had one of the five best QBs in the NFL — but since 2016 it’s become more clear that passing efficiently and producing points is the way to The Big Game in February.

The last four Super Bowl teams to represent the NFC, despite not having QBs that are vastly better than Cousins, have ranked in the top three in points scored and top five in Passing Expected Points Added (a measure of performance versus down and distance).

While the Vikings improved significantly from 2018 to 2019 when going from John DeFilippo to Kevin Stefanski, their supporting cast in pass blocking and No. 3 receiver did not improve enough to get them into the statistical Super Bowl hot zone of offenses. And when push came to shove in San Francisco, the offense faltered in large part because the 49ers defensive line demolished the Vikings’ offensive line.

So how could the Vikings have done things differently after signing Cousins to change those numbers and alter the future?

Act 1, 2018

That segment of our episode begins just hours after Cousins was introduced when the Vikings signed defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson.

This is where the Vikings began a trend of counter balancing the Cousins signing with investments on defense rather than fortifying the QB’s supporting cast. Richardson signed a one-year, $8 million contract to start at three-technique and the Vikings moved on from four solid players in Tom Johnson, Shamar Stephen, Jeremiah Sirles and Jarius Wright.

In 2017, Johnson and Stephen rotated at three-technique. They were by no means All-Pros but held down the position admirably on the league’s best defense and Sirles and Wright were offensive role players. Sirles was a reliable fill-in lineman and Wright was dubbed “Mr. Third Down” for his clutch catches during the run to the NFC title game.

While the offensive line market in free agency was not robust, monster guard Andrew Norwell signed with Jacksonville for $13.3 million per year. He would have made for a gargantuan upgrade for the Vikings at guard. In 2018, Norwell gave up just 14 QB pressures and ranked ninth by PFF in pass blocking (side note: In 2020, he ranks first).

By contrast, Compton gave up 34 pressures and ranked 45th out of 56 guards. There was a bad break mixed in with Nick Easton’s injury in OTAs but Remmers at right guard was every bit as vulnerable, grading 41st and giving up 42 pressures.

At receiver, Wright caught 43 passes in 2018 for Carolina while the Vikings turned to the struggling Treadwell and ultimately signed journeyman Aldrick Robinson off the free agent pile. Treadwell dropped a key pass in Week 2 that led to a tie with the Packers and was targeted by Cousins in several other key spots in which he didn’t come through.

There’s also the matter of the 2018 draft.

The Vikings picked the successor to their veteran cornerbacks in Mike Hughes with the 30th overall pick. As we’ve seen in 2020, coverage is massively important and drafting a cornerback is generally a good move. But if they were all-in on Cousins, either an offensive lineman like James Daniels or Braden Smith or a receiver like Courtland Sutton, Christian Kirk or Anthony Miller could have been a game-changer.

You have to wonder about the butterfly effect if the Vikings could go “Back There” to that free agency and draft period.

Act 2, 2019

Things didn’t change from 2018 to 2019.

Rather than address the weaknesses at guard or depth receiver heading into 2019, the Vikings leaned on the offensive coordinator and the draft to fix their issues. They put Stefanski in charge and picked Garrett Bradbury and Irv Smith Jr. with their first two selections.

On the defensive side, the Vikings could have moved on from Everson Griffen and created a large chunk of cap space. Instead they re-signed him to an $8 million deal. They could have let linebacker Anthony Barr walk in free agency. Instead they signed him to a $67 million contract.

Meanwhile guard Rodger Saffold signed in Tennessee, where he ranked as PFF’s ninth best guard in 2019 and the No. 3 receiver became seventh-round pick Bisi Johnson.

The Vikings signed Josh Kline on the cheap and moved center Pat Elflein over to guard, where he ranked dead last in pass blocking efficiency in 2019. Johnson was a fine fill-in for Adam Thielen when he got hurt but averaged under 9.0 yards per reception.

Free agent receiver Adam Humphries, Cole Beasley, John Brown and Randall Cobb all became solid bang-for-buck signings elsewhere.

Since this is the Vikings Twilight Zone, it’s easier to second guess who might have signed in Minnesota or which draft picks would have turned out to be hits or misses but if the Vikings could take a trip back in time, they very likely would have invested in extra pieces to get them into the top five as an offense and give Cousins everything he needed.

Act 3, 2020

But even with the benefit of that hindsight, the Vikings still didn’t double down on Cousins this year.

The Vikings signed Cousins to create cap space, which they spent on a nose tackle and running back.

“Us being able to renegotiate and extend that contract gave us some flexibility from a cap standpoint to go out and get a Mike Pierce and to do an extension with a Dalvin Cook and some of the other things we were able to do in the offseason,” GM Rick Spielman said last week.

Other things including signing safety Anthony Harris to the $11.4 million franchise tag and trading a second-round pick for $13 million defensive end Yannick Ngakoue.

Not to mention trading top receiver Stefon Diggs, who they did replace with star rookie Justin Jefferson but still went into the season with Johnson, Chad Beebe and cheap free agent Tajae Sharpe as receiving depth.

At guard, it’s only gotten worse. The Vikings cut Josh Kline and rolled out journeyman backup Dakota Dozier and moved Elflein to right guard.

As poor as the Vikings’ defense has been, the offense’s struggles have contributed to the issues. The offense ranks dead last in plays per drive, fifth in turnover percentage (in a bad way), 24th in scoring percentage and 31st in time of possession per drive.

Some of that is on the shoulders of Cousins. Some may also be on the fact they are 30th in pass blocking, third in pressure rate and run the ball on second-and-long more than any team not named the Giants.

Unlike the episode “A Most Unusual Camera,” struggles at the guard position, receiving depth and issues relating to a run-first offensive philosophy in an NFL where passing rules everything probably could have been seen without the benefit of a future-telling camera.

Additionally, we might have seen coming the Vikings’ strong performance in the red zone and on third downs this year that Mike Zimmer could have schemed them to be a good situational defense in 2018 and 2019 without keeping/adding stars to the defense. And we see from the development of mid-round picks and UDFAs in the past that they could have brought along other players and let expensive ones walk.

Final act

Usually at the end of every Twilight Zone episode, there’s a kicker. The characters understand the errors of their ways and the audience is left in awe of their realization.

If we were writing this episode, the front office and coach would look directly at the audience and say, “why didn’t we give Kirk everything he needed? WHY?”

And Serling’s closing monologue would go something like this:

“In the chess game of the NFL, quarterbacks are but a king, whose fate is determined by the actions of all the queens and rooks and bishops surrounding them. And the Vikings found out that you can only sacrifice so many pieces before the game ends in checkmate. Or maybe that’s just how things work in the Twilight Zone.”

Or maybe the kicker would be that Cousins’s fundamental flaws would have led them down this path anyway.

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