Monday night — December 2, 2019 — Russell Wilson’s team defeated Kirk Cousins’ team, 37-30, in a big December game which would help determine where the respective teams would play in January.
Saturday night — December 3, 2011 — Russell Wilson’s team defeated Kirk Cousins’ team, 42-39, in a big December game which would help determine where the respective teams would play in January.
Deja vu, baby. Russell Wilson doesn’t have a perfect record against Kirk Cousins — the Seattle Seahawks lost to the Washington Redskins at home in the 2017 NFL season (but only because Seahawk kicker Blair Walsh missed three field goals in a game the Redskins won, 17-14) — but Wilson does keep winning the biggest meetings between the two quarterbacks. The Seahawks and the Minnesota Vikings are both playing for division titles and home games in the NFL Playoffs (with the possibility of a first-round bye included). Monday night’s game in Seattle was high-stakes poker.
Eight years earlier, Wilson and Cousins met in a supremely important game, the first Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis. Wisconsin’s first trip to Indy started something special. The Badgers are returning to the Hoosier State for their sixth Big Ten title game appearance. Michigan State has made three such trips, but the Spartans haven’t been back to Lucas Oil Stadium since 2015.
That Big Ten title game — played in a dome instead of freezing outdoor weather — invited conditions suitable for a track meet. That’s exactly what the game became. Moreover, it began a full decade in which Big Ten title games have usually been high-scoring rather than grind-it-out slugfests. This is proof of the evolution of college football. It is also proof that the old Big Ten of Woody and Bo no longer lives among us.
Get this: Of the eight Big Ten Championship Games which have been played, only two have involved fewer than 58 total points, only one with fewer than 48 (Michigan State 16, Iowa 13, in 2015). If you told a 1985 Big Ten fan that the most important Big Ten game of the season in the decade of the 2010s would average 64.25 points scored per game, s/he would have laughed at you. Yet, that’s the reality we have.
Russell Wilson and Kirk Cousins got the party started in 2011.
Both men threw for three touchdowns that night, in a seesaw game which was pure popcorn. Wisconsin took a 21-7 lead in the first quarter. Michigan State stormed back with 22 points (yes, a 2-point conversion on a fake extra point) in the second quarter. The teams went to the fourth quarter with Michigan State maintaining an eight-point lead at 36-28, but guess what happened? Russell Wilson took over in the fourth quarter, leading two touchdown drives for a come-from-behind 42-39 victory. It’s what he did then. It is what he is still doing now with the Seahawks. Some things never change, right?
Wisconsin won the Big Ten in 2010, the last year without divisional play. That was due to a tiebreaker involving Michigan State. In 2011, the Badgers and Michigan State settled it on the field, and in the end, Russ won, Kirk Cousins lost. Cousins was not at fault for Michigan State’s loss that night, but as Green Bay Packer fans could tell you, Cousins has not owned the fourth quarter in the NFL the way Wilson has, or the way Aaron Rodgers so often has. He tried his best Monday night, but Wilson had the final say.
Russell Wilson usually gets the last word… and such was the case in the first Big Ten Championship Game, part of a streak of three straight Big Ten titles the Badgers won from 2010 through 2012. It is delicious for Wisconsin-based football fans to see a Badger hurting the Vikings and helping the Packers these many years later. The fun began on one night in Indianapolis, eight years ago.