Nick Shook over at NFL.com, with the help of NFL’s Next Gen stats, ranked the top-10 deep passers in the league from the 2019 season.
The Vikings’ Kirk Cousins ranked seventh on the list, completing 42.6 percent of his deep passes, more than 6.4 percent of what was expected.
Here’s what Shook wrote about Cousins:
Long a Next Gen Stats hero, Cousins returns with a sterling 9:1 TD-to-INT ratio on deep passes and the highest passer rating on deep throws of this entire group, but he lands at seventh because, well, his receivers were open a lot. Cousins’ deep passes weren’t nearly as risky as some others’, as the quarterback attempted such throws into tight windows just 20.4 percent of the time, by far the lowest of any of these guys. His receivers were open on 25.9 percent of deep pass attempts and averaged target separation of 2.2 yards.
It will be interesting to see how the loss of Stefon Diggs impacts Cousins’ throws down the field. Then again, Cousins will have a healthy Adam Thielen, which is something he didn’t have in 2019.
You can check out the full top-10 list here.