Kirk Cousins Is So Ridiculously Overrated

The backup quarterback is always the most popular man in town. But this Kirk Cousins stuff is getting ridiculous. He’s not good. Don’t you think if he was good, one of the teams that was scrambling for a quarterback would have offered something of value? I don’t expect the Rams to be throwing the farm at Washington in a reverse QB trade with the team that traded the picks for Robert Griffin III three years ago.

Lost among this Washington Post attribution thing is the underlying commentary: Joe Theismann was advocating for Kirk Cousins to start. I thought for sure that the end of last year would have put an end to that.

Kirk Cousins started in place of Robert Griffin last year at the end of the season. With games against Atlanta, Dallas, and the Giants, it was a fairly easy passing schedule (the Giants had a good pass defense, but the Cowboys and Falcons were pretty bad).

Cousins sucked. I mean, even setting aside the opponents, the raw numbers were brutal. He averaged 5.5 yards per attempt. He threw 7 interceptions to 4 touchdown passes. He completed just over 52% of his passes. Among all quarterbacks to throw 150 passes last year, he was dead last in passer rating, completion percentage, and yards per attempt. He was worse than Geno Smith as a rookie. He was below Christian Ponder. He was behind everyone.

If we weight-adjust the opponents by the number of passes he threw (and then remove all the Cousins’ passes to see how others did), a starter would have been expected to complete 63.2% of passes, for 7.4 yards per attempt, 7.6 TD, and 3.8 INT.

So yeah, Cousins may be this week’s talking point, but come on. This is getting ridiculous. I foolishly thought that the way he actually played would end this talk, but I guess not.