Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Kevin Cole talks about Kirk Cousins's strong analytical start

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

Matthew Coller is joined by Pro Football Focus data scientist and host of the Unexpected Points podcast Kevin Cole to talk about his analytical QB rankings through two games, which have Kirk Cousins as the fourth best quarterback in the league. First they talk about the odd nature of kicking and the ways in which nobody can figure it out, then Kevin breaks down why Cousins's numbers are so strong so far and what it would take to keep them going. And will we see the Vikings' defense improve as the season goes along? What would 0-3 mean in a 17-game season? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here sitting outside TCO Performance Center and on the phone with me from Pro Football Focus and the Unexpected Points podcast is Kevin Cole making a return to the show. What is up, Kevin? How are you? I'm great. I guess I'm doing better than Vikings and Vikings kicking Twitter that I've seen. But you know what? I'll say I was a little surprised. The reaction was kind of like, yep, you know, we expected that. So maybe the heartbreak actually wasn't as large as I was expecting on that one.

Now, I saw somebody's tweet where they said that as soon as the kick went wide to the right, they just got up, went outside and mowed their lawn and felt nothing. And that is, I think, where the fans are at now with the kicking i mean it's happened so many times that you know you're an odds person and a tremendous numbers person i mean this must go so far against the numbers to have this many makeable field goals cost you very important games yeah yeah it definitely goes against the numbers i mean kicking is one of those strange things because so impactful uh so much nervousness and you know feelings of angst around not having that position quote-unquote solved but at the same time it's also random so you see things like

the bucks trading up to get iguayo in the second round or someone paying a lot of money to a kicker or you've seen things you know with uh with the vikings where they went and they traded for a kicker who was like a backup for the ravens and then he ended up washing out like people just so desperate to get their hands around it because you know it's so impactful yet you feel like you have no control of what's going on i I mean, if we go through the last couple of years, you have Blair Walsh was a draft pick and was great for a year. Yes. And then had a meltdown,

and especially after he missed the 27-yarder against Seattle. And then after that, they tried, let's see, bringing in Kai Forbath, who hits one of the most clutch field goals in Vikings history in the playoffs. Then they draft Daniel Carlson. They cut him after a bad game. He's now tremendous for the Raiders. Then they bring in Dan Bailey, who's like a 90% kicker for his career. He's fine.

And then all of a sudden, terrible. And then now they go with Greg Joseph. And you mentioned Kari Vedvik in between there, which was a very strange decision. So I looked into this last year, Kevin, and there truly is no way to predict who's going to be good year to year at kicking. I mean, it seems like a few guys, Justin Tucker is one of them historically. But aside from that, everybody else is just guessing at this position. Yeah, everyone's guessing. I mean, you can, on a long enough timeline,

start to get an idea of who's good or who may not be good but as those names you listed out sometimes especially with someone like dan bailey i mean i remember when dan bailey was on the cowboys right he was made one of the highest paid kickers maybe the highest paid kicker in the nfl at that point in time uh fantasy leagues people were like dan bailey we need to get dan bailey he's so good and And then he falls off. But, you know, sometimes these guys come back. So you're also, like, at any point in time in their career, we're so concentrated in what they did the last kick, the last five kicks, the last ten kicks.

And I do think there's a bigger mental aspect in getting the yips and things like that when it comes to kickers that, you know, sometimes if you let them play through it, they'll come back. But you just can't afford to do that as a team a lot of the time. I was thinking about the sample size of this, too. Now extra points are thrown in as more of a kick that is missable. Even then, you're making 60 kicks a year if you take a lot of them I mean think about think about like if we judge all quarterbacks on 60 passes or all running backs on 60 runs and yet here we are I mean a defensive end gets 60 plays a game that we get to look at and yet it's 60 plays over a year for this guy and I remember looking back at you know Mason Crosby had a game where I think he missed four and there's

been all sorts of these instances of great kickers just falling apart all of a sudden and then you know coming back and then having great season so it's really hard to predict but missing a uh 37 yarder indoors um what are the odds of that I mean it's got to be like 90 percent that you make it right oh yeah yeah that's that's an over 90 percent kick I mean there might be a discount at the end of the game or something like that, but you'll see for kicking. And that's what I also think, you know, we really remember the kicks that are missed, of course, so it stands out in our mind. But the percentage of making the kick doesn't really vary that much until you start to get over 40 yards for sure, but more like over 45 yards and then even over 50 yards when it becomes difficult.

So, yeah, I mean, those kicks should be as close to a gimme as you can have, other than if you're kicking, you know, from the two yard line or something. But the Viking quotient was not factored in there. Now, so give me this and then we'll move on to what I wanted to talk to you about. Just Mike Zimmer decided not to be more aggressive at the end of that game to try to get them closer. And my view was based on what you just said, it was like, look at 37 yard or should be like 90% or more. You should make that. And, and even though, um, you know, aggressiveness is reward, uh, rewarded often in the NFL. I still think that you're putting yourself numbers wise in a great position to win that game and the guy just blew it for you but if you run

another play and Delvin Cook fumbles like he did the week before then we're all going what were you doing Mike Zimmer why why wouldn't you just kick the field goal right I don't know I don't know how you felt about that yeah I mean I guess it doesn't you're probably okay running some more plays there but the thing is you have a few different things going on uh fumbled like you mentioned i mean let's roughly one to two percent of running plays are are fumbles so we're talking about a kick that's already like a 95 plus kick so you're adding that into the equation there's a holding call that can happen on some of these plays. Now, maybe that's unlikely, depending on how you do it. There's a false start

that can happen on these plays. So you start to add up the probabilities of each of those negatives. I think once you're inside the 20-yard line, I'm fine. I'm fine if you're inside the 20-yard line. Now, I understand people complaining about a team that has the ball on the 42-yard line, and then they start, you know, lining up, getting on the right hash mark for their kicker. That sort of stuff doesn't make any sense. But, I mean, we just saw it, right, with Kansas City where Clyde Edwards-Alaire, where they were going to try to pick up the first down and then run out the clock, and he fumbled there, and that changed the game for the Kansas City Chiefs.

So, yeah, it can happen. And I think no matter how much confidence you have in the running back, especially the way things work now with guys punching at the ball and doing other things, like I just don't know if you can really be confident that a fumble will not happen in that circumstance. That's exactly how I felt. And the Vikings have been holding a lot and the NFL is calling holding penalties more this year. And so I think that that was also a significant concern for Mike Zimmer for why he just wanted to line it up. So let's get off kickers and talk about Kirk Cousins, because you do analytics quarterback rankings, which always get the Internet fired up. Let's say that you take a couple of different factors and you put them together and here's where everybody stands. And so Kirk Cousins is right now in the top five.

Now, historically, he has not spent a lot of time in the top five now historically he has not spent a lot of time in the top five and in really anything like any category even if you use quarterback rating or pff grades it's usually in the same sweet spot of being like eighth to 14th think somewhere in that sort of ballpark uh what are we to make of these first two weeks of cousins play um it can it continue? Or do the numbers say it's going to regress? What can we learn from the numbers so far? Yeah, I mean, I was looking at his numbers

over the last few years. So you're right. I mean, so far this year, it's really his rating, a little bit of his positive grading since he's in. He's one of the top graded guys who's pulling them up and that's what's getting them into that top four more than his efficiency and i measure efficiency on the basis of expected points added per play so that includes running plays you know it includes all drop back sacks all that all that sort of stuff so he is he's having a strong year

by his efficiency in an epa but it's about the same. We're right in that same range where he's been 9th, 9th, and 10th over the last few years doing that. He's really in that top five as far as grading is concerned. He was a top 6-7 guy, I believe, in grading in 2019, so this isn't totally unexpected for him. But like you mentioned, I think he has been around long enough. He's shown enough that getting up into that real top, top tier is probably not something he can maintain. And also my rankings are based at least partially on sample size. And, you know, as the course of the season goes on, as they hopefully have the lead in games and that goes on, he's probably going to be one of the

lower sample size quarterbacks. And he's already a little bit on the low side this season, but he'll continue to be on the lower sample size quarterback. So he's never going to be the game changer, even if he has the efficiency on a play by play basis. So I've thought about this a lot with the way that certain quarterbacks are used. Ryan Tannehill is one of them. You know, Jared Goff in Los Angeles is this way. Jimmy Garoppolo, where there's only so much asked of the quarterback and oftentimes their efficiency numbers, their yards per attempt and things like that are good, but the total that they

amass by the end of the season is I think Cousins was at 3,600 yards or something last year and was 27th in pass attempts. I think about basketball for this and how Kobe Bryant was talked about as being inefficient at times and Allen Iverson was talked about as being inefficient. But then it's sort of like, well, but they were their whole offenses. I mean, sometimes, not when Shaq was there, but for Iverson, for sure, he was the whole offense.

And I think of that with quarterbacks too where if a quarterback is asked to throw over and over and over and over again as the centerpiece of the offense his yards per attempt are probably not going to be as high probably less play action and things like that I guess I wonder what you make of the efficiency versus the uh the sort of total numbers that quarterbacks put up yeah I mean I think it's uh it's a mix of the two i mean good work has been done by different analytics folks including ben baldwin in particular uh for those who don't follow don't follow him please do so unless you're maybe a packers fan he's like he's going after rogers quite a bit in his in the past but that'd be good for vikings fans right so so he's done some so he's done a lot of work to show that it's tough to find evidence

within the statistics that a better quarterback throws the ball more often or vice versa. Now, he may just be backing into this because he's a Russell Wilson fan. That would be something that was going against Russell Wilson for all these years. So I do think that once you get to the NFL, there's a little bit less to whether or not you can really say so much about a quarterback as far as how much he throws. But I think there's something to it, though. I mean, let's face it. If you subbed out even a great quarterback like Russell Wilson and the quarterback there was Peyton Manning or Patrick Mahomes or someone else, I highly doubt that Pete Carroll is going to force the issue to run the ball you know

half of their plays and continue to do that because there is something to quarterbacks who are really able to handle under any circumstances to go back and pass the ball and what we've seen with cousins this year which has been somewhat of a thing in the past that's continued over this year despite his excellent overall performance so far this year he still has an enormous gap between when he's had a clean pocket and when he's been under pressure and that again like if you send the quarterback there back more times if it's more obvious you're going to pass more often it's just natural that you're going to face those pressured situations more often and that may be really a defining factor

with a lot of these quarterbacks between elite and a guy who can perform really well in limited circumstances right i think about i guesssport comparisons with stuff like this because I used to cover hockey, and the third-liners and fourth-liners in hockey would always have these great efficiency numbers. And part of the reason was because they were playing against other third- and fourth-liners in protected situations. And I think of the same sort of thing.

It's like you don't want your fourth- liner playing up against Sidney Crosby and you don't want, you know, Kirk Cousins dropping back 40 times in a game because he'll get pressured more. The offensive line obviously is not built to be able to handle that and hasn't been for a very long time. And I think that it, well, you can have explosive plays like they did against Arizona. You sort of have to rely on those and you have to rely on getting 14 and 16 yard runs from Delvin Cook and I think this week as they match up against Seattle, that's still very

favorable for them. I think you can almost go through the schedule and say, where is it going to be favorable? Check, check, check, check, check. These are the games they're going to be good on offense. Where is it not? Check, check, check, right? I feel like we can do that before the games are even played out of where they're going to have an advantage and where they won't. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think that these – I remember a few of these, like, Seattle Vikings games have been interesting, to say the least, in the past. So that will continue to play out with two teams that are looking to do a similar philosophy against each other. I mean, I think what happens in a lot of the fans mind when it comes to cousins is you have he is he's good enough if you build everything around him that you can win and win well but if but you know you have to build around him you have to be smart with your spending uh very smart with your spending around him with with how much that his contract is so he gives you a chance he fits into this bigger bucket where you know we're going to talk about guys like

baker mayfield and what sort of contract do they do they deserve he fits into that too but there are just going to be plays i think you just have to live with the fact that there are going to be plays where you're very frustrated where maybe he takes a sack where you felt like he could have done something instead where maybe checks down instead of going for a first down. And he's just not going to play out at this point. But what you're going to have to try to do is enhance what he can do. And I think that's what the team's done to a degree. But obviously they have salary cap and they're spending a lot of money on a lot of big name players elsewhere.

And I think that's probably the bigger overall problem than let's get rid of the quarterback and start over from square one. So do you think that they should put the gas down on him more or that they've got it right? And they're just going to have to live with the realities of that and improve on defense. I mean, the defense has just not been good through two games. It's had its moments, but it's mostly been pretty poor. And if not for Daniil Hunter against Arizona, they might have put up 50. So I guess I wonder about because we talk about this a lot of I've sort of joked and maybe I'll make t-shirts out of it one day of like lean into the Kirk like you paid for it you might as you might as well let him throw a lot but as you laid out there are pitfalls to that and they have a younger offensive

coordinator now Clint Kubiak that I don't know has the full autonomy to be changing philosophies or anything, considering who his head coach is. I just wonder what the right thing is to do with a quarterback like that. Yeah, I mean, I think I would lean in a little bit more just earlier in the game. It's another one of these analytics takeaways is there's no such thing as establishing the run as some people think if you're playing against minnesota vikings you're playing against alvin cook you're playing against this offense that we've seen you know running play action on play one the linebackers are going to say you know what the run hasn't been established yet so i'm not

going to react and i'll wait to see you later on in the game whether or not this will be effective or not so that's what i would say is like allow kirk cousins to make the plays which make them very very effective which are those play action plays which are the plays where hopefully you can make it easier on your blocking try to maximize those especially earlier in the game because then if you don't do it then if you don't lean into him a little bit then the time that you're going to be leaning into them is when you're down multiple scores um no one thinks you're going to run the ball it's you know you run it a couple of times and it's third down and eight and then you're sending them back there to pass with the uh pass rushers you know pinning their ears back and the defense waiting to make a play on the ball so those are not his situations right no i i

totally agree and i think that you know even what we saw we saw against Arizona was second play of the game, it's a play action after Delvin Cook gets a first down, and K.J. Osborne just goes unguarded by Arizona because their secondary is not good. But these are the things that happen when you play aggressively with play action early in the game. Plus, by now, with Mike Zimmer being in this league for so long, everybody thinks you're going to run on first and second down every drive. Right. So I think it plays like your priors play to your advantage here. Let me ask you about just defense in general. Like when when do we start judging a defense?

Because we know that going into a season, it's very unpredictable. We say, oh, well, they did this on the roster and this on the roster so they should be good and then they come out and give up you know 61 points in the first two weeks uh when do we start going uh this defense might not be good or how much patience should we have with the defense yeah and i think you're gonna have to have a lot more patience with the defense than with the offense generally just because it's more of a question mark uh going into the season as you mentioned how things lay out on paper versus how they end up playing out during the season are a couple of different questions and i

think what you can do is you can say okay who have we faced the offenses that that we faced and you know joe burrows may be a bit of a question mark so far this year and that offense but kyler murray is a guy who just who seems to make a lot of plays and he's been able to do that and he's been a little bit of a high variance guy himself because of the fact that he scrambles around so much you don't know when there's gonna be a big play or not so because of that i think that's a mistake i would look at things like how are how is your success rate versus versus um like the efficiency that you're giving up because generally as as time goes on those things are going to start to to even out so i know that uh let me let me look here because timo risque was another one of our analysts here

came out with a piece today and it looks like for the for the vikings defense they're about in line but if you look at the success rate that they've allowed in the epa per play that they've allowed it's not that bad i mean it's not great it's below average at this point but it's not catastrophic in either direction so i think you combine that with the fact that played fairly good offenses um that's one thing and then another thing you can also look at is are you generating pressures or other things that may be a little bit stickier than the coverage because the coverage is very very important um but it's something that's going to vary a lot based upon these chunk plays blown coverages things like that whereas the

pressure rate that you're getting though that's something that'll hopefully translate into sacks as the season goes on but on a one and two game sample, you could be getting a lot of pressures, but just not getting home as much as you would hope to. Fans are going back to stadiums, so you have to be ready with the best Minnesota football gear. That's why you have to check out SodaStick. I saw a ton of SodaStick gear around training camp. I expect to see it in the stadium as well. There's so many cool designs on hats, t-shirts, and hoodies for the fall weather, including the John Randall design that is extremely cool. There's also the straight cash homie Randy Moss homage. Can't stop the Thielen hats.

And a personal favorite, the old video game designs that Tecmo fans will appreciate. Check it all out at SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. Everything is screen printed here in Minnesota. And I can tell you that the shirts are comfortable and they last because half of my closet is now SodaStick at this point. Again, that's SodaStick.com, Minnesota sports inspired goods, and keep your eye out for our soda stick giveaways yeah and i think that uh also when you revamp a defense and you bring in so many new pieces it's just a lot to ask for them all to be together in lockstep and we've seen a couple of blown coverages and a couple of you know technical

mistakes that have resulted in big plays and i think that those things will change but here's my question is will it matter if they change I mean because if they go 0-3 with a 17 game season and an extra playoff spot you're still not completely dead but it's going to feel like that especially with Cleveland coming in 0-4 how does that change the formula because that's a thing that you know I haven't really seen out there maybe you have for how it's different if they lose to Seattle and they go 0-3. Then we have to sort of throw out who cares if the defense will eventually get better, right? Or do we now that the landscape is a little different from those traditional numbers that we've seen, teams that start whatever, end up whatever? Yeah, yeah i mean it's hard i mean you could say oh well let's figure out a way to try to increase you know some sort of randomness or

variance with how we play but the problem is and i think this could come into a lot of different circumstances when it comes to teams is you know if you're not if you're if you're giving up like your efficiency for giving up how good you think you will be overall in order to increase the randomness that you may need to dig out of a hole, whether it's a record hole or a hole in a particular game, it really hurts a lot to do something like that. One classic example is if you're a team that has better than have as good of a chance to win, maybe you'll run the ball a lot then there'll be fewer player plays in the game and that'll give you a higher chance to win well the problem is if you're just decreasing your efficiency as an offense then it pretty much kills any benefit that you get to increasing the randomness so i don't know i think for it's just too early in the season and you know zimmer obviously is a very qualified and uh well-respected head coach that you probably just have to lean further into correcting the mistakes and trying to play that way going forward than doing anything major

and just just hope that things turn around and you know maybe even hope within that division there's some chance of getting there because there could be three four teams coming out of the NFC West this year so you don't think they're toast exactly but kind of I don't think so I mean unfortunately we've seen this a little bit before last year with a slow start which then ended up translating into a little bit of a run so i don't know i think oh and three is close oh and four is i'll say oh and four is definitely toast oh and three is close so you're going to want to win this game this week yes yeah i think they do i think that's very important to keeping this season going uh let me uh let's play a quick game before we wrap up um i won't make you do

trivia on vikings uh quarterback stat lines this time although you did a good job last time i just i'm gonna i want to throw an nfc team at you and ask you if they're good uh so are the dallas cowboys good i mean i'm gonna say no I haven't been a believer in them, though, vis-a-vis other teams in the NFC East so far this year. So, yeah, I'm just not a believer in that defense. I think that defense is one of the worst. So I'm going to give a no on that, but, hey, it could turn around. Plus, I think the Eagles may be a little bit better than some people think.

Yeah, I think so, too. The Carolina Panthers, the Vikings will play them right before the bye week. Are they good? I think they're solidly mediocre. I mean, that's what I would say. I think Sam Darnold has been put into a much, much better situation, but I don't think he's a totally different person. So I feel like they're a team that could be league average offense

and a league average defense this year. But for them, that's a good thing. That's a step up from what we've seen in the past. Are you convinced that the Packers are good after their whooping of the Lions? Yeah, I'm pretty convinced that the Packers are good. I mean, I don't think we're going back to necessarily MVP Aaron Rodgers for the rest of the season, but whenever you have an elite first ballot Hall of Fame top three quarterback, I'm always going to put you into the good category. Okay, and the final rapid fire would be the Los Angeles Rams of Los Angeles. Do we believe

that they're good? Because this was my team that I sort of said, the hype, and I've seen a lot of Matt Stafford in my life here covering the Vikings, and I've never thought that he was a guy who just magically elevated his team. But they are 2-0 and a little bit of a rough ride in Indianapolis. Are you buying into them as a legit contender? Yeah, I mean, I'm in the same category as you. I'll do one of these things where I'll say, say no i'm not buying into him as a legit contender but then i also know that i'm biased on this so maybe maybe they really should be so so i'll vote against myself and say they're not a contender at the same time well i think that they got a pretty

favorable first couple of opponents playing chicago with andy dalton and then whatever is left of carson Wentz's corpse to be able to only win by three. So I will. And also remember the year that Stafford played, what was it, maybe seven games or something? He was lighting the world on fire and everyone said, oh, look, this is Stafford. This is the real him. I've seen him come so close to having these amazing seasons and winning years, and then there's always the regression that hits with him because that's like a high-variance quarterback who takes risks

and throws the ball down the field a lot and makes a lot of mistakes. So, yeah, we'll hold off on this. We'll circle back on this one, Kevin, later in the season. We'll see if Cooper Cupp continues to be – he's actually invisible, I think, on some of these plays, the way he goes down to the field and no one seems to guard him. I mean, I love Dan Orlovsky, but when he tried to say in that week one game where he was 15 yards behind everyone that Stafford manipulated everyone with his eyes, I was like, you know, yeah, you can get a one-on-one that way.

You can maybe get a little bit of coverage. You can't get someone behind the defense by four different defenders by 20 yards with manipulating with your eyes so well plays like that where that's you're gonna have to see is that's going to regress obviously as the season goes on yeah if his eyes were that magical he'd have more playoff wins i think anyway so maybe got lasik like james oh yeah that's right that's right uh kevin cole at kevin PFF on Twitter, the unexpected points podcast. Kevin, always great to get together with you. Love your perspective. And do not ever stop tweeting out charts that make people upset. That's what they love. That's what that's what I'm here for. I'm just a stat jockey.

All right. Thanks, Kevin. Take it easy.