Don't buy into 'narrative' around Kirk Cousins with Falcons | Chris Simms Unbuttoned | NFL on NBC 

Yeah you must not watched him in prime time

Wait til the game is on the line and he checks down on 4th and 8.

Yeah you’ll get prime time games alright. You’ll also get excellent numbers cause his stats are great, like a white Dak. And when things don’t go his way on the field he’ll go into turtle mode, sitting by himself closed off to his teammates.

@@kbr6783 I said the same thing on a Simms/Florio conversation. Threw it for 3 yards. Good luck building a team when you are paying Kirk 45 mil per season. Thank God that POS is finally gone.

@@chuckurso593The team is already built with young playmakers at key positions on offense. They just have certain holes they need to fill and they still have cap space and the draft in order to do that. Kirk will be fine if he stays healthy and keeps playing well. But you can say that about any player.

LMAO 🤡🤡

He has consistently acknowledged that Kirk Cousins is among the top half of QBs -- I think you are confusing his teasing of Mike Florio because Florio is a diehard Vikings fan who tries to hide his Viking pain

Kirk's team wasn't as good as their opponents because of Kirk

Kirk is one hit from being out the entire year.

Plenty of those games that I watched they should have won they had a better team but they didn't because of Kirk

When did they call him "ELITE"? Top 10 or 12 is not "ELITE". What you a Viking fan and you're butt hurt?

KIRK couldn't land it if the world was a runway.

Exactly! Also, no one in MN is shocked or surprised! Cousins is a good QB, but the $$ is just too much. This is just a lazy effort to create controversy. No issues between ownership, KAM & KOC.

They are talking about Kirk cousins like he’s a winner, then they beat up dak or lamar for not winning. Kirk Cousins is the Bradley Beal of the NFL, stat guy that you know is never going to win shit.

Falcons fan here. I have no idea what will happen. But what I will say is I would be very satisfied if we just made it to the playoffs and were competitive in that playoff game. It’s been tough over here with lousy QB play. So difficult to watch.

I can completely understand where falcons fans are happy to get a good veteran Qb. Vikings fan to know all to well what it feels like, I mean we had Christian Ponder..... I don't think i need to say much more. At this time tho for the vikings to continue building a younger competitive team Cousins had to go. Watch out Draft Season Cuz Vikings are taking a Qb @@toddmullis8051

That’s what you’ll get with Kirk, a competitive team that will win 9 to 11 games and then get bounced first round of the playoffs. Good luck Atlanta he was brought into a ready made team in 2018 and they didn’t even make the playoffs.

Except the rams were a successful team before Stafford got there they just couldn’t win the big game. Falcons have been garbage for years now.

​@@chrisstowe3448Yeah, but I refuse to be negative until I have to. Let's wait and see what happens.

@@chrisstowe3448If we had had decent QB play last year the team would have destroyed the NFC South. Maybe even won a playoff game or two. The team is loaded with weapons and talent. Just needs a Captain to take the helm.

@@chrisstowe3448 "Falcons have been garbage for years now." who have evidently been building their team the last few years.

Um the donetell lead defense gave up close to 500 yards to Danny dimes in the air and ground

@@kevinkundert7275 Kirk was down 7 with 8 minutes left and scored 0 points the rest of the way, that’s not an elite qb

The Vikings sucked in 2022. Idgaf what there record was or what stats Kirk and jj had they sucked. The Vikings team in 2023 was way better, specifically the defense. Kirk was also more comfortable this season in the offense. And also let’s not forget the giants were pretty good in 2022

Danny Dimes! He ain’t worth a penny.

@@adamsgaming6265 the Vikings clearly didn’t think he was good enough to keep around

Its basically a 2 yr deal with the Falcons.. 3rd year is only 10 mill $..4th not guaranteed...

Good luck with Sam Darnold or a 2nd tier rookie as your QB next year.

I disagree. I believe that most Vikings fans have always liked Kirk. The vocal minority was just that, vocal, and have delusions that they are the majority. These same fans seem to want to ignore how bad the defense has been for most of Kirk’s time there (NO quarterback is gonna win games when you have one of the worst defenses in the league...not even Mahomes). They forget how terrible Zimmer’s outdated and ineffective coaching was, and seriously believe that ONE checkdown that doesn’t work out makes him “Captain Checkdown”. It’s like they go into dumb mode when it comes to anything about Kirk Cousins. Like the Vikings lose…must be because Kirk played bad. Kirk gets the team in a position to win, but then the defense fails miserably at stopping the other team from scoring…..he isn’t clutch. Kirk throws an interception…he’s a choker. Kirk leads the team back from a 21 point deficit and throws for 400+ yards and 5 TDs, passer rating 112 , but the kicker misses a field goal and the Vikings lose…he’s a stat padder. Kirk is 1-3 in the playoffs as a starter….he’s not a winner in the “big games”. One look at his win-loss record….eh, he’s mediocre. I could go on and on….. The thing is, EVERY quarterback is gonna have a bad game, throw a pick, whatever. Advanced stats, that look at everything, disproves all of these false narratives about Kirk. Viewing Kirk this way is reductive and shortsighted. Instead of looking at his actual performance, it’s a narrow-minded way of viewing and evaluating his play and blames him for things that he can’t possibly control (bad defense). Or they choose to call it an excuse. Football is a cohesive team game, after all. These toxic labels shouldn’t apply to Kirk anymore.

@@Paula-mv8im totally correct.

agreed. People keep forgetting that Kirk was brought in to be the missing piece in 2018. They lost in NFC championship game in 2017 and brought it Kirk to take them to the promised land. They didn't even make the playoffs in 2018. Had a huge win over Saints in 2019 in the WC round and then got blasted by the Niners.... should have let Kirk walk after that.. instead they re-upped to try and save jobs but failed... zimmer and spielman both lost their jobs because they paid wayyyy too much for a good - not great - QB

@@normanbrownstein4532 Lets not forget that coaching matters, too. Stop giving excuses for Zimmer. He lost his job because he only had 4 out of 8 winning seasons every…other…. year. He had a 1-2 playoff record before Kirk even got there. Spielman lost his job because he allowed a toxic culture to be created by his coach. Zimmer should have been fired after that embarrassing blowout in the 2017 Divisional game. Add to that, he fired his OC every year, he had terrible clock management, had conservative and predictable play calling (run, run, run, pass), was 32nd out of 32 teams in situational football, and had an outdated and prevent style defense that gave up more points in the final 2 minutes of each half than any team in history. No quarterback is gonna win games when you have bad coaching and one of the worst defenses for most of Kirk’s time with the Vikings.

​@Gman333g Perfectly said!! I am a Vikings' fan and Kirk is one of my favorite players. The Kirk hate is ridiculous. I believe that most Vikings fans have always liked Kirk. The vocal minority was just that, vocal, and had delusions that they were the majority. I'm upset that the Vikings let Kirk leave. Heck they might as well get rid of JJ as well. 2023 feels like unfinished business. I feel like the Vikings failed Kirk. By neglecting the o-line (for years) for the team's pocket passer, having one of the worst defenses in the league for most of his time here and ineffective coaching by Zimmer who instead of helping his quarterback and meeting with him weekly, openly disliked him, trashed him in meetings, fired his OC every year and didn’t surround him with talent to consistently win. Ah…what could have been. Now we will never know. The Vikings are never gonna win a Super Bowl until they realize that long term continuity (and not the QB carousel) is what it’s gonna take to be successful. Now I gotta get NFL+ or whatever so I can watch the Falcons' games.

As a redskins fan i will always root for Kirk. I was mad that we let him walk

You build your team through the draft. The salary cap is gonna be going up with how much the NFL is gonna be raking in with the increase in the European markets. Plus, Rob Brzezinski is a wizard figuring all of that out. Google "Brzezinski is a wizard" sometime.

It’s the GM’s job to build that roster and the coaches job to get the best out of them. Kirk played up to his contract and did his job.

According to the Kirk haters, Kirk 100% affects the whole game even though he doesn't play defense or kick the ball....smh

In his defense, many of the "weirdly and suspiciously narrow and specific" statistics come from the basement of nerds at ESPN... they love the "he's the first player in history to record 21 points, 8 rebounds, 7 blocks, and 10 turnovers in one game" factoid -- I'm not calling it a stat, its just a carnival number

ESPN’S QBR system is another weird stat sometimes, Kirk earned a 32.9 against the Indianapolis Colts in the greatest comeback in NFL history (33 points) and considered Cousins’ second half theatrics (4 touchdown passes and 417 passing yards in the 2nd half ALONE which set an NFL record) as a product of “garbage time.” In their QBR stat, plays are no longer up-weighted for clutch situations and winning the game. So, all of those fourth quarter comebacks (eight of them which led the league) is the reason that his QBR was so low in 2022.

fools gold

Yeah....like bad pass protection has nothing to do with that OR no run game. Learn the game and you’ll understand more.

He did pretty well with KOC as a first time head coach / new OC and a 28th ranked rushing offense and a 31st ranked defense. Robinson worked with McVay and KOC and was a quarterback. Kirk will be fine.

Dude. Kirk is 36. He blew out his Achilles last season….. they signed him to a 4 year deal. That is fricking insanely stupid.

​@@evans.1448It's basically a 2 year deal with 100 million guaranteed. 50 million is a lot but it's the going rate for a veteran qb.

If he was your qb the last 12 years of his career YOU WOULD BE DISSAPOINTED 😂 just like me a vikings fan!

Arthur smith is worse than all three QBs if you count Mariota. Mariota should’ve been benched week 8 to find out ridder was not the answer instead of wasting an entire 2 seasons. The play calling was so bad that Atlanta still would have lost some of those close games even if they had a healthy Kurt cousins playing. Good riddance Arthur Smith. Might be a good coordinator, but all I know is do not give him the keys. Cause all he did was fuck shit up in apparent attempts to do the unexpected. A Smith would always get away from what was working and shit his pants right at the end. He would always try to do too much. If it ain’t broken don’t fix it. Ridder was not great and he is not the guy for the job, but he would have done better had his coach not been an idiot. All I’m saying. Heinicke probably got the worst of the play calling. Like Smith wanted him to fail so he could reinsert Ridder. Go back and watch if you don’t recall.

You'll get banned from RU-vid mentioning that name 😂

ATL is a juggernaut??? lol

Kind of agree...not all the losses were Kirk's fault, and I do think that it would be theoretically possible for him to win the championship on the right team. That being said, I think it would be hard to argue that this falcons roster is significantly better than the ones he's been on while in Minnesota. Rooting for him though, it would be fun to see him win it

The cap will continue to expand, like this year. The contract is for 2 years only, and it's reasonable.

@billlarussa5908 not with the holes the vikings have. Plus Kirk hasn't shown to be a player who can go further than round 1 of the playoffs. More Vikings fans seem to be happy with this, it was time to move on

Falcons fans aren't pumped about Cousins. We're just hoping it works.

Kirk is a great stats guy but when it comes to playing clutch in the playoffs he comes up short. Not saying he is the only reason the Vikings didn't get to the SB with him. It just seems like some guys have it like Mahomes.

@@rfahy72 I'm not blaming him for not winning a SB with the Vikings, their defense were terrible in the years he played there. Even in 2022 when they finished 13-4, their defense ranked 2nd worse in the league.

Actually the opposite happened. In Kirk’s first year with the Vikings, Diggs had his first season of 1,000 receiving yards (plus his second season). Also in Kirk’s first year in Minnesota, Thielen is the only player in NFL history to start a season with the most consecutive games with 100+ receiving yards. Thielen had 1373 yards and Diggs had 1021 yards. And with Kirk as their quarterback, Diggs and Thielen gave the Vikings their first pair of 1,000+ yard receivers since Moss and Carter in 2000.

@@Paula-mv8im You just proved my point there bud. The Vikings were loaded on offense when Cousins signed with them back in 2018. Diggs, Theilen, Rudolph and Cook were all in their prime. But it still took Cousins a while to gel with the whole team and they missed the playoffs. Now the difference here is that the NFC South is a very weak division and it's a 17 game season now. Even if Cousins won't gel with the team in the first half of the season, he might get better in the second half.

Ok Purdy was picked last in the draft so all 32 teams didn't know he'd be a successful qb in this league lol. He was surrounded by a stacked roster top to bottom with above average coaching. Kirk cousins has never had that. O'Connell was probably his best coach yet their defense was mid at best. Washington doesn't count because...well washington was horrendous when he was on that team. But kirk still threw 4000 yards every year healthy. You can't mention Stroud because he was projected QB 1b and to trade up for that pick would cost a fortune (ask Carolina/Tepper about risk and reward on that notion). Wins and losses come from team play. The falcons miss a pocket passer and got the best one available for a front loaded 4 year (only 2 years tbh) deal.

For TLDR users...Kirk will be fine once Quavo puts those Carats on his neck dwbi

The Falcons can't just take another team's starting QB. 😂

Purdy was also on a stacked team and Stroud went to an improved. Do you really think that Stroud would still be successful had he gone to the Panthers or another bad team?

Exactly, people forget that…

On really good Vikings teams? Uh.....no (coaching was a big problem) In 2018, the run game dropped from 7th to 30th. The Vikings also utilized play-action on just 21% of their plays which was good for 25th in the league. Their DVOA on play-action plays versus non-play-action plays was 33.8% higher (eighth). Kirk is one of the best at play action passing. Kirk outperformed 2017 Keenum by most key metrics. Just looking at the numbers, the Vikings’ defense didn’t really have a drop off from 2017 to 2018. But from watching the games, one would know that this wasn’t the case. Griffen had attend to his mental health and missed 5 games. He didn’t look like the same dominant pass rusher when he came back. Linval Joseph got banged up as the season wore on and his performance dipped. Neither Jaleel Johnson or Jalyn Holmes made an impact. Kendricks, Barr and Rhodes had lackluster performances. And the defense couldn’t stop the run. In 2019, the defense regressed even worse. The passing defense was 18th. In the playoffs, the defense struggled to stop the run and the o-line was inefficient. The Vikings had 0 absolutely 0 running game. They ran the ball 9 times for 26 yards … The 49ers ran the ball 43 times And then there was Zimmer. The Vikings neglected the o-line (for years) for the team's pocket passer, had one of the worst defenses in the league for most of his time here. Plus, ineffective coaching by Zimmer who instead of helping his quarterback and meeting with him weekly, openly disliked him, trashed him in meetings, fired his OC every year and didn’t surround him with talent to consistently win. The Vikings failed Kirk. Zimmer fired his OC every year, had terrible clock management, had conservative and predictable play calling (run, run, run, pass), was 32nd out of 32 teams in situational football, and had an outdated and prevent style defense that gave up more points in the final 2 minutes of each half than any team in history. No quarterback is gonna win games when you have bad coaching and one of the worst defenses for most of Kirk’s time with the Vikings.

"Darnold will be great if..." You really just said that aloud?

One

And one of the worst defenses for most of his time there. If Kirk / offense scores 25 points but the bad defense allows 30 points...you still ain't winning the game. It's really not that complicated.....smh

Pass blocking is my concern as a Falcons fan. They'll have to have better pass blocking than last season in order for Cousins to be successful.

Not even Mahomes can win games (or throw a TD) with a subpar o-line and a defense that was porous against the rush and played too much soft zone (Super Bowl LV). Mahomes was pressured on 29 of his 56 dropbacks, good for 52%. Hmm….sounds like what Kirk has had to deal with during his time in MN. Other than Mahomes and Rodgers, I don't believe Allen or Stroud could lead their team back from a 33 point deficit. Burrow and Herbert sure couldn't get it done.

@@loki2240 In 2021 per PFF, Kirk was the league’s second-best quarterback while surrounded by the fourth-worst pass-blocking line. That was not just a one off. He’s been performing like that for years. He is the only quarterback in NFL history to throw 4000+ yards and 30 touchdowns like clockwork every year despite not having a very good o-line that the Vikings neglected for years. In 2022, the Vikings had the 28th ranked run game and one of the worst defenses in the league. Despite taking the most hits (and league high) of any other quarterback, he led the Vikings to a 13-4 season with his arm and the biggest comeback in NFL history and still never missed a game due to injury….all because of Kirk Cousins. I'm sure Kirk would LOVE better pass blocking...lol

Burrow has 5 postseason wins in like 4 years. Cousins has ONE win in 10 plus years as a started... Yeah, they're pretty much the same.... there isn't a coach in the NFL that woudn't take Burrow over Cousins 100 times out of 100.

@@normanbrownstein4532 Burrow and Cousins have played the same in the playoffs TDs YDs Completions etc the difference Burrow's defenses give up 18 ppg and get 13 turnovers in the playoffs and Kirk's defenses give up 28 ppg and get 0 turnovers DO SOME RESEARCH BEFORE YOU POST BS wins and losses are not a QB stat

True... and yet every great QB seems to have many more wins than losses, playoff appearances and playoff wins...hmmmmm

@@normanbrownstein4532Stafford had 0 playoff wins in 12 years he still has a losing regular season record. LA traded a younger QB who had 3 playoff wins and a SB trip in 5 years and had MORE than twice as many wins as losses for him. By your logic LA should never traded for Stafford. Tarkenton never went to a playoff game even one time in 12 years. The Vikings brought him back and they MISSED the playoffs for the 1st time in 4 years. By your logic they should have dumped him. Marino Ryan Tarkenton Rivers has 0 SB wins while QBs so bad they couldn't win a regular startinh NFL job have SB wins: Dilfer Foles Hostetler Williams etc N

@@normanbrownstein4532 ODDSMAKERS WHO DEAL WITH FACTS NOT FEELINGS CAUSE MONEY IS ON THE LINE IMPROVED FALCONS ODDS TO WIN SB AFTER THEY SIGNED KIRK.

Where exactly is the cap hell for the Falcons? It's a TWO-YEAR deal guaranteed. Then options for years 3 & 4. Right. because you don't know what you're talking about.

@@billlarussa5908 Let's review exactly what I said. "Now, where are we?BACK in cap hell for 2-4 years, " Hey, look! 2-4 years, which is exactly what the contract says! Maybe I actually know what I'm talking about?

@@robwilkes8436 Where exactly will the cap hell be? If Cousins bombs in 2 years, they let him go and it costs them no extra $$. If he does good they'll pick up his option for a reasonable $45M per season.