Why aren't the numbers adding up?
Why aren't the numbers adding up?
Kirk Cousins remains a top rated quarterback but the Vikings are sub-.500 again...why is that?
By Matthew Coller
SPREADSHEET — Over the past few days, I’ve been reading a book called, The Eye Test: A case for human creativity in the age of analytics by Chris Jones. One of the main themes of this brilliantly crafted book is that artistry can’t be captured in a number. Jones tells the story of a movie executive who supposedly created an algorithm to project which films would be huge box office hits. It failed miserably, in part because the movies lacked human touch. More or less: People’s tastes can’t be captured by a computer.
I was thinking about that when poking around the numbers surrounding the Minnesota Vikings and quarterback Kirk Cousins. On paper, the Vikings’ offense is good. They are 11th in scoring, seventh in yards and eighth in net yards per pass attempt. For the first time in the Mike Zimmer era, they are top five in Expected Points Added, which has often been an indicator for teams that reach the Super Bowl.
Cousins’s personal numbers are just as impressive. He has the sixth most passing yards. Only Kyler Murray and Matthew Stafford have higher traditional passer ratings. Even the advanced numbers like Cousins’s 2021 season. By ESPN’s QBR, he’s in the top 10. He’s Pro Football Focus’s No. 2 graded quarterback behind Tom Brady.
How does a quarterback end up with such remarkable stats end up with a 5-7 team that just lost to the 0-10-1 Detroit Lions? How can the Vikings’ QB be 12-16 over the last two seasons and have a 105.6 rating?
I’m not sure we truly appreciate how rare this is. The combined record of the 10 best non-Cousins passers in terms of QB rating this year is 71-39. That’s a 65% winning percentage, which projects to an 11-win season.
This isn’t an anomaly. I picked out four random seasons and how the top 10 rated QBs fared in terms of record. They vary a little but look mostly the same.
— 1998: 95-41 (.703)
— 2007: 107-41 (.723)
— 2012: 103-53 (.660)
— 2016: 95-56 (.629)
What could be causing this? You might say: It’s the defense, silly. And that’s most certainly true. The Vikings have allowed the fourth most yards this year and gave up game-winning drives to Cooper Rush and Jared Goff. They’ve been steamrolled on the ground and have enough injuries to fill a small hospital.
But that explanation isn’t quite satisfactory. For one, the Vikings were in the top five in yards allowed or points allowed in 2018 and 2019 and yielded only mildly better results. In the current rankings of points allowed, the Vikings are 25th but the clubs in 17th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 26th and 27th all have more wins than they do.
There’s also the idea that offense and defense are completely separate — that they have no impact on each other whatsoever. That seems pretty flawed, right?
The Vikings’ offense is 19th in third down conversion rate, yet Cousins has a 113.8 QB rating on third downs. Maybe we’re onto something here. On third-and-10 or more, Cousins has completed 36 of 44 passes and has a 123.5 QB rating but has only 13 first downs.
While the numbers look pristine, fewer first downs means more pressure on the defense. Here’s what I mean: The Vikings are 22nd in points allowed per drive and 25th in total points allowed. The Kansas City Chiefs, who are No. 1 in third down percentage, rank 20th in points allowed per drive. The other team just has fewer drives.
Is this meant to blame Cousins for the defensive woes? Gosh, no. He led a go-ahead drive with 1:50 left against the Lions and all the Vikings needed to do was get a measly stop versus the NFL’s 30th ranked offense. Of course, getting down 20-6 because they couldn’t finish off drives earlier in the game caused them to be in that position.
Think about how many times that has been the case. We think about game-winning drives as happening in the final moments but game-winning drives happen all throughout a game. The Vikings got down by two scores to Cincinnati because the offense was flat out of the gate. They needed a 54-yard field goal to beat the Lions the first time around because the offense couldn’t put Detroit away. They roared back against the Panthers after a miserable two quarters of offense in which they should have been whooping Sam Darnold.
Now this is where the example of the movie executive and the human touch thing comes in. Michael Scott and Wayne Gretzky once said that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. The data misses 100% of the throws that aren’t made. Quarterback rating and PFF grade don’t see the spots where a team has a chance to put their opponent away and they get the job done. Brett Favre famously threw interceptions that cost his team in NFC Championship games but he was partly in playoff games all the time because he was willing to attempt throws that nobody else would dream of making.
Just as the Vikings have gotten behind because of lethargic offensive showings, they’ve let teams back into games because of them. By now you’ve probably seen the stat about how they have led in every game.
There’s a human touch to daggering somebody. I’ve been watching the World Chess Championship lately and both of Magnus Carlsen’s wins over Ian Nepomniachtchi came the same way. Ian made one inaccurate move and Carlsen, the world’s greatest chess player, punished the ever-loving heck out of him for it in two victories. Think of how many Super Bowls Tom Brady would have if he hadn’t taken advantage of opponents’ mistakes. The Falcons were up 28-3 in the Super Bowl and committed a holding penalty that took them out of field goal range. That’s all Brady needed.
Quarterback rating doesn’t care about any of that. The PFF grades don’t either. And that’s why, though the best passers have great stats as they always have, the possibility exists for QB stats to be muddier than we’d like to think. Passing environments now draw up schemes that create high percentage passes, which are rewarded by most metrics (Derek Carr is ahead of Joe Montana in QB rating, for example). It makes sense that completing a pass or making an accurate throw is of utmost importance but not if it’s a checkdown to the tight end when an absolute dime into traffic is needed.
While we’re at it, another thing QB rating misses is rushing yards. There are 20 quarterbacks with more rushing yards than Cousins over the last two years and 27 QBs with more rushing touchdowns. Washington’s Taylor Heinicke has 311 rushing yards this year. That’s 80 more than Cousins in 2020 and 2021.
Of course, none of these things happen in a bubble. Trust is a human thing as well. The Vikings didn’t show much trust against Detroit when they called a receiver screen on third-and-9 to open the game. In the 2019 playoffs against New Orleans, they needed a single first down to avoid giving the ball back to Drew Brees. They ran three times and punted, allowing for a Brees comeback to tie the game and send it to overtime.
It might be easier to convert third downs with decent pass blocking. Without telling you, I bet you could easily guess where PFF ranks the team’s pass blocking this year. Yep, it’s 29th. The Vikings spent their free agent dollars on nose tackles and defensive backs, electing to play a developmental tackle at guard. Against Detroit, with Christian Darrisaw out, they moved that guard to tackle, where he allowed a strip sack.
Would most quarterbacks end up with a lot of safe throws when A) the play caller doesn’t show much belief in them and B) the offensive line can’t hold up? Possibly.
While it’s fascinating that Cousins’s numbers haven’t translated, it’s also become exhausting. It feels like we’re always playing a game of who’s fault is it anyway? It’s never one thing and one stat never gives us all the answers.
The other thing that’s unusual is that nobody cares whether they’re good, bad or ugly this year. In a world where we’re always trying to siphon every bit of truth or predictive ability out of the data that the wonderful internet has provided us, this is the rare situation where it doesn’t make any difference. Five wins in 12 games is five wins in 12 games. Good performance from the QB? Who cares.
Frustration is a human thing, too. Maybe these numbers tell us that in a different world, things could have been much better with the same performance from Cousins. Does that matter when fans have watched four years of football since going to the NFC Championship with only one competitive season?
Maybe this one is about the eye test. Or maybe it’s a statement about the much broader picture, from chemistry between QB/coach to front office decisions to the NFL’s salary cap structure to the individual traits that predispose Cousins to playing a certain style.
The point may feel belabored by now but here’s why it matters: If changes are made, Vikings ownership is going to ask the next group of decision makers what they think of Cousins as the team’s future quarterback. After all, he’s still under contract through 2022. Whether they decide they can turn those statistics (and cap hit) into wins is going to be a part of that discussion.
It’s not an easy conundrum to solve. There aren’t too many examples like it. All of the other top 15 players all-time in QB rating have winning records and many have gold jackets. They also didn’t get down 20-6 to 0-10-1 teams too many times.
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Get rid of Cousins as soon as it is economically feasible. His incessant propensity for check down passes make his stats look good at the expense of our chance to win. That’s the way he is wired and he won’t change.
-“The Vikings’ offense is 19th in third down conversion rate, yet Cousins has a 113.8 QB rating on third downs. Maybe we’re onto something here. On third-and-10 or more, Cousins has completed 36 of 44 passes and has a 123.5 QB rating but has only 13 first downs.”-
So, on 64% of his completed passes on 3rd-and-10 or more, he was throwing well short of the sticks. Who knows how many of the remaining 36% were also dump offs, but the receiver prevailed. Is there an average depth of target stat available for this situation (3rd-and-10 or more).
It sounds like the old joke on the construction site when trying to jockey a tight fitting beam into place. As it slid into place on one end, the guy on that end would yell, “I got mine” and act like he would do nothing to help the guy/s on the other end get the much more difficult part in place.
“I got my stats. Too bad you guys didn’t get a first down.”