The quarterback position is one that is both incredibly important and also heavily scrutinized. Nobody knows that better than Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins.
Ever since he was a fourth-round pick of the Washington Commanders in 2012, he has been overlooked and analysts have been more critical of him than is warranted at times.
This season is no different. He has arguably played his best football but his stats have taken a dip. They are arguably his worst as a Viking but the team is winning and a lot of it has to do with Cousins.
ESPN and Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz was tasked with finding a weakness for all 32 starting quarterbacks and he deemed Cousins’ is zone coverage.
Cousins has problems with zone coverage — and has consistently had these problems for years. This has actually been less of an issue in 2022 than in the past couple of seasons, although that’s less because of strong performance against zone and more because Cousins’ QBR against man coverage is his lowest since the ESPN database of coverages began in 2016. Take a look at his year-by-year splits:
2022: 56.3 QBR vs. zone, 60.3 QBR vs. man
2021: 41.5 QBR vs. zone, 80.8 QBR vs. man
2020: 43.8 QBR vs. zone, 78.3 QBR vs. man
2019: 62.4 QBR vs. zone, 65.5 QBR vs. man
It’s hard to debate that Cousins has been poor against man coverage this season, as his receivers struggle to separate outside of Justin Jefferson, but to see his rating against zone be so low is a tad surprising.