Tag: NFL Quarterbacks

The Cousins No One Talks About

It is about time we start to properly appreciate Minnesota Vikings QB Kirk Cousins. This should be the thought in the head of every NFL fan who sat through one of the closest and craziest Wildcard Weekends in league history.

Cousins – he of seemingly no suitors and no fame at various points in his career – led the upstart Vikings to a stunning win over the heavily favored New Orleans Saints and QB Drew Brees, a player who spent most of 2019 breaking every passing record in the book.  Yet, despite the presence of Brees on the field – and despite a certain Tom Brady also appearing during Wildcard Weekend – it was Cousins who made the single best throw of the Saturday/Sunday quadruple header.

It is in the fourth quarter and overtime where the greats make their names. That was the case on Sunday when Cousins dropped back into the pocket and launched a rainbow of a pass downfield to WR Adam Thielen streaking inside the Saints 10-yard line. Cousins knew he couldn’t let Brees touch the ball again. He knew that one mistake would end the Vikings season despite the sterling work of RB Dalvin Cook to get them to this point. He knew his throw had to be perfect.

And it was.

The ball seemed to drop almost vertically out of the sky as Thielen made an over the shoulder catch and tumbled to the turf completing a 43-yard pass and instantly silencing the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.  One play later – a Cousins touch pass to a leaping Kyle Rudolph in the back corner of the Saints end zone – the game was complete and Cousins had led his team to a win few thought possible with a play that fewer knew he had the ability and passing range to make.

Cousins won this game despite a litany of statistics that suggested he couldn’t. He was 0-15 against teams with a .700 winning percentage. He was 0-10 with the Vikings against 10-win teams. He was 2-10 against playoff teams and just 3-11-1 against teams with winning records. The theory was that Cousins simply didn’t have what it took to win the big one – or even a minor one – against a good team.

That narrative has now changed. No matter what the Vikings do from this point forward this postseason, Cousins has that monkey off of his back. He is turning into the premier player that the Vikings hoped for when they signed him to a fully guaranteed $84 million contract in 2018.  He is now one step closer to leading the team to where they want to be and he will be playing with a renewed level of confidence and attitude thanks to his massive throw – and gutsy performance – in New Orleans.

Article by Premier Players

Manning Influence, Success A Major Part of Giants History

Placing Eli Manning in the history of NFL quarterbacks is no easy job. Manning has been overshadowed for his entire career by other signal callers – not least of which was his brother Peyton – and he has faced extra levels of scrutiny and criticism simply because he plays in the New York market.

Manning, however, rose above all that noise, above the dominance of Tom Brady and the passing stats of Drew Brees, and today he should be regarded as one of the premier players in his sport over the last decade or so.

It says a lot about Manning and his career that his two Super Bowl wins – both wins over Brady, Bill Belichick, and the New England Patriots no less – were achieved with the New York Giants carving their route to Super Bowl success as a wild-card team. Manning was never seemingly a player who could win 12, 13, or 14 games a season, and to be fair this was as much to do with the supporting cast that the Giants built around him as to the play of the quarterback himself. What Manning could – and did – do however, was to perform like a premier player in the big moments and on the big stage.

In each of his two Super Bowl wins his team was a double-digit underdog to win the title. The first game saw David Tyree pull down his famous catch off of his helmet, but it was Eli who put the ball up into a position for Tyree to make a play. It is a play still seen on ESPN to this day, but the significance of Eli’s pass, of preventing the Patriots from the first perfect season since the ’72 Dolphins marched their way through the NFL, seems to have been a little lost in the decade that has followed.

Real Giants fans love Eli. They are aware that this premier player gave everything for the franchise through injury and scrutiny for his entire career. Eli was never the flashy quarterback – either in playing style or lifestyle – that the New York tabloids wanted, but he was a premier player at the start as he carved out a place for himself on the team’s Mount Rushmore alongside the likes of L.T. and Michael Strahan.

Manning is the best passer in Giants’ history. His 116-116 record is obviously worse looking than the 101-68 record Phil Simms put up, but it is fair to say that Sims had far more help than Manning ever saw. That is both in terms of the coaching and the defenses that Sims played with and the lack of both those aspects that Manning had to muddle through.

Premier players achieve despite their surrounding cast and that is the legacy that Manning has left in New York. The time was right to make the switch to rookie Daniel Jones, but never underestimate the influence and success that Eli achieved and will leave in the Big Apple.

Article by Premier Players