Kirk Cousins is very aware of the narrative surrounding his performance against good teams.
Entering Sunday night’s game against the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback hadn’t won a primetime game since Dec. 26, 2015 and hadn’t beaten a team with a winning record since Nov. 5, 2017.
That all changed on Sunday night when Cousins’ Vikings beat the Cowboys 28-24 to improve to 7-3. Cousins played a good game, going 23/32 for 220 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions.
After the game, Cousins was asked by NBC’s Michele Tafoya about beating a winning team. He responded by deflecting matters and noting that it’s a team game.
“Well, first of all, the Vikings beat a winning team,” Cousins said. “Football’s a team game, and today I relied on my teammates. We ran the ball well, our defense stepped up big at the end, and I was just a part of this big win tonight.”
That answer seemed to be Cousins’ way of saying the narrative was unfair.
To some extent, that might be true. On the other hand, the evidence seems to show that Cousins, while good, has a fairly low ceiling as a quarterback. Maybe that will all change this year. The Vikings have won five of six, and Cousins has passed for 15 touchdowns and just one interception during that span. If he keeps playing this way, he’ll have completely wiped out the narrative.
