Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
All hail the greatest regular season Pro Bowl quarterback in the NFL.
There’s going to be no shortage of jokes about the Vikings this week. Their fraudulent path to the No. 3 seed was a road littered with near-losses to mediocre teams. The play inside the Giants game was uninspired, boring, and failed in key places at the worst possible times. Even their future is looking kind of bleak. Minnesota is projected to be well above the salary cap, and without much draft capital to get younger — or better in the process.
At the center of this is Kirkland Cousins — which I’ve decided is now his name because he’s a Costco brand franchise quarterback. I know that sounds like slander, but it’s really not. I have great admiration for Costco items. They are absolutely functional facsimiles of high end products. They will get the basic job done for you — but nobody is going to be spreading the word about the Kirkland charcuterie platter you brought to the box social.
Cousins will forever be exactly the guy he is right now. Every season he’s going to throw for 4,000 yards, he’s going to make the Pro Bowl every year, and he’s going to continually do just enough to make you think he has the talent to win a Super Bowl. He won’t. It’s not in his DNA as a player. There’s just something eternally missing from Cousins’ game that the truly great ones, the ring-winning, Lombardi-hoisting QBs possess, which he lacks. Cousins is the Scottie Pippen of NFL quarterbacks. He’s never going to be the guy you need when the pressure is on, when a critical game on the line — but he’ll get you at close to the dance, as if that’s a consolation prize.
On Sunday all Cousins needed to do was one measure better than the bare minimum — and he couldn’t. When the team needed the smallest modicum of magic, they got this.
I don’t even know what to say about Kirkland Cousins anymore. The Vikings have been trying this for five years now. Every year has been the same: Cousins is the best unremarkable quarterback in the NFL.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of teams would kill to have the best unremarkable passer in the league. It’s just … read the room. If you want to not just make it to the playoffs, but thrive in them, it’s going to take someone else. There are some quarterbacks who live for the 4th and 8 with the game on the line, and others who are going to check down and lose, waiting for people to defend their near-perfect game, except when it mattered most.
My goodness does the man have more than an even share of people willing to defend his play to the death. I’m convinced there are more people who would take up sword to extol Kirkland’s virtues, comparing him to Joe Montana — than the reality that he’s Derek Carr without the eyeliner.
I say this out of love. Minnesota, I want better for you. Even if you can’t see it right now. I don’t want you to be the team who waits a decade to marry your Cousins so you can settle down in a safe home and never take that trip to Europe you dreamed of in college. I don’t want you to always order a California roll on sushi night because of that one time you got food poisoning from a bad order of mussels and it’s scared you off seafood ever since. I don’t want you to waste energy defending Kirkland hot dogs, when there’s artisanal sausages out there the likes of which you’ve never experienced.
Your window is exactly right now. There is a fleeting moment here before the Lions go to the next level, and the Bears get a supporting cast for Justin Fields. Life is too short to chill in the Costco food court and say “well, at least I’m not in a Sam’s Club right now.”
Winner: The Jaguars, and all of us by extension
There are so many reasons the Jaguars winning is good for football. Firstly, we needed this in 2022. These playoffs are the perfect extension of one of the weirdest regular seasons in recent memory, and it would have been a damn shame to make it this far and go chalk.
In the alignment chart of the playoffs the Jaguars are our essential chaotic party member. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether they’re lawful or evil (I tend to think they’re neutral, but could be swayed). We need an element of utter ruination whose goal it is not to simply play, but tear teams asunder in their wake. The force that will take a DM’s perfectly curated and organized story and throw a Molotov cocktail into the tavern immediately on arriving at the quest hub and ruin it all.
Before the playoffs began I said that no team was more dangerous than the Jaguars, and they showed it. Now we’ll see how long they can keep this going — because the AFC is looking weak as hell at the top (at least until we see the Chiefs), and this could lead to the kind of randomness we need.
The other factor is what this loss means to Los Angeles. We cannot sit idly by while Justin Herbert goes the way of Philip Rivers and wastes away in a den of mediocrity. Being favored and getting beat by the Jags is exactly the kind of thing that should lead to coaching changes, and with their talent on paper the Chargers should be one of the most desirable jobs in the NFL. Now we wait to see if Dean Spanos is ready to open his wallet to make it happen.
Loser: The Bills
Look, I get it, y’all won — but I’m supposed to be sitting here on a Sunday night saying “man, Buffalo looks like they can go all the way.” Not, “my god, they almost lost to Skylar Thompson throwing 45 times for 220 yards.”
It’s all about meeting expectations, and right now the Bills look an awful lot like a team that lied on its Tinder profile. There’s nothing about that game on Sunday that showed an ability for this team to make a serious run at the Chiefs and win the AFC — and that might be on us for having higher than deserved expectations.
To be fair, this was a divisional game — and weird things happens inside any division. Also Mike McDaniel is a good coach, even though he’s still young and can’t manage a clock. There are some easily justifiable reasons why the Bills didn’t meet expectations this week, but it still doesn’t mean I like it moving forward.
Loser: The Bengals
It’s late and I’m tired. Just sub in the appropriate player and teams names for everything above. It’s the identical story here too.
Cincinnati should have looked a whole lot better against the Ravens than escaping thanks to a one-in-a-million fumble play that sealed the game.
Winner: Daniel Jones
It’s rare to see someone who went to Duke that didn’t peak in college. I’m used to these folks have the whole world in front of them thanks you their parents trust fund money, and they never live up to expectations before settling into a middle management position at their parents’ corporations thanks to nepotism.
By my count there are precisely three people prior to Daniel Jones who peaked after leaving:
Grant Hill
Ken Jeong
Tim Cook
Jones has gone from punchline to NFL Playoff winning quarterback in a year, and he damn well deserves his flowers. Granted, beating a Vikings defense that can’t defend the play action when your entire offense is based off the play action isn’t exactly an achievement worthy of epic poetry, but Jones really solidified himself as the biggest reason the Giants are moving on. Jones threw for an efficient 300 yards, he led New York in rushing, and more or less gave Minnesota hell.
It’s weird to see the same player we’ve been watching for years finally put it together, but he’s really clicking under Brian Daboll and Mike Kafka.
