Vikings Film Room: Kirk Cousins misses the mark
The Minnesota Vikings 24-7 loss to the Eagles left a lot of frustrations on the field for the purple and gold.
Most of those frustrations were on the offensive side of the field. Quarterback Kirk Cousins was the main culprit of those frustrations on offense.
One of the biggest issues with Cousins was dealing with pressure. He only completed 5-of-13 passes with two interceptions while under pressure. That came up in a major way late in the game on Monday night.
The game was still somewhat in doubt mid-way through the fourth quarter. The defense hadn’t allowed a point in the second half and even gave the offense the ball in enemy territory twice. The major issue was the offense didn’t take advantage of that.
After the Jordan Hicks interception, the Vikings had a first and goal on the nine yard line. On both second and third down, they drew up plays for Justin Jefferson to get open on the outside. Both plays worked but Cousins threw the ball into harms way.
The Vikings run a shallow and deep concept on the front side to try and get Jefferson open. I believe this works if Jefferson runs more to the pile-on and Cousins puts this ball in a good spot. The long and the short of it is that the throw was atrocious from Cousins. He did have massive pressure in his face, but that’s no excuse for throwing a near-certain interception.
The next one is even worse.
On the outside, Jefferson lines up, gets a clean release and breaks it off cleanly for an open corner route. The issue on this play is the Eagles run cover 0 and send six at Cousins who is operating out of an empty set. The free rusher comes right at his face and he throws a duck up to Jefferson that ends up short and turns into a Darius Slay interception.
The biggest takeaway with these two plays is that they worked but the execution from the pass blocking and panic throws from Cousins hindered this from working.
There is hope moving forward but some things will need to be cleaned up.Th
