Frozen Rope wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 2:09 pm
He never once has ever conceded anything.when Cousins does get time and has a really good game, not a peep out of him.
If anything, Stump's argument around Cousins is similar to the climate change "debate". There are those who point to an unusually cold day or even series of days in December or January in one part of the country and use that point example to claim that climate change isn't happening because look, it's unusually cold for this time of year.
But on larger scales of time and over many more data points, the underlying warming trend is clear and undeniable. There is a baseline that underpins things even if there are points of data that buck the trend.
As it relates to Cousins, he performs well against weaker defenses and teams that don't defend the pass well. There are plenty of data points that show that. Against the stronger defenses he faces, his results are basically the opposite.
If I had to summarize what I understand Stump's position to be on Cousins it is that yes, the Vikings can win with Cousins, but they will only do so with a very strong supporting cast, and with Cousins earning the money he's earning, assembling and maintaining a supporting cast of that level will be nearly impossible compared to their competition. If the argument is that the team around Cousins needs to be stronger if the QB's level of play against better competition is consistently weaker, then does it make sense to pay that QB in the first place? Why not just relieve the team of that QB's exceptional compensation and use that freed up money to make the rest of the team stronger, and then get a QB whose pay can be justified for whatever level of performance the Vikings can expect out of him? Pay what you need to pay at a given position to get the performance you need to get out of that position. That is what good, winning teams do at more positions than not. Weak teams and teams that struggle overpay for the production they're getting at certain positions, which in turn hurts their overall competitiveness.
It's not an unreasonable argument.
The main point of contention with the argument is whether Cousins is a great QB worthy of his top-level compensation or he's an average or even below-average QB who is not worth what he's being paid. If that debate has no context, I think it can be argued that Cousins' stats put him around top 10 consideration and certainly top 15 in the league.
But if you look at the games that really matter, be those playoff games or games against rivals for divisional titles or playoff teams (in other words, the better teams in the league), Cousins falls woefully short there. It's not up for debate any more than the long-term temperature trends in the climate change debate. Cousins struggles greatly to win the games against the types of teams that you need to be able to beat to have any chance of sniffing the Superbowl, much less winning one. And I think we saw another example of that this last Sunday against the Browns. While he's not the reason the Vikings lost, neither did he do much of anything to improve their chances or rally them.
I'm with Stump on this. I spent a decent amount of time and energy arguing the "Cousins just needs a better team around him" angle, but I've seen enough. Cousins isn't going to change this team's playoff fortunes, and if they're going to shell out top bank to a QB, that QB needs to be able to change the team's playoff fortunes ala what Brett Favre did in 2009 with an otherwise similar Vikings team under an otherwise similar Vikings head coach and (I can't believe I'm writing this) the same GM. Cousins hasn't done that and he's had more than enough time to show he can do it.
