Before the season started, I speculated about the kind of season we might expect from Sam Darnold. Based on a handful of similar case studies, I concluded that there was a decent chance that Darnold would have the best season of his career, but he was nonetheless unlikely to develop into a franchise QB. I braced myself for a drop-off from Cousins-level quarterbacking and expected a bit of down year while we waited for rookie QB J.J. McCarthy to develop.
Yet here we are, at 10-2, and Sam Darnold is not only having the best season of his career, he’s also badly outplaying Kirk Cousins, leading the Atlanta QB in TDs, INTs, passer rating, QBR, PFF grade, EPA/play, wins, and almost every other metric you might consider.
Of course, football is a team sport, and Darnold has benefited from a potent combination of weapons and a top-tier play-caller in Kevin O’Connell. Still, Darnold has been so good — especially in recent weeks — that it’s worth asking: has Darnold’s 2024 season eclipsed every one of Cousins’s seasons with the Vikings?
There’s a compelling case to be made that, had he not gotten injured, 2023 would have been Cousins’s best season in purple. In the real world, though, Cousins did get injured, and there are no trophies at the NFL level for what could or should have been.
Aside from this, several of Cousins’s seasons in Minnesota could have been considered his best. Indeed, part of Cousins’s trouble was the fact that he was consistently good to very good but seldom great, and consequently, the 2018-2023 Vikings’ offense was never quite able to establish itself as an elite unit.
Still, on both a statistical level and a “vibes” level, 2019 was probably Cousins’s best year. It was the only season in which he won a playoff game, and he posted the highest passer rating of his career at 107.4.
Comparing Darnold’s 2024 statistics with Cousins’s 2019 stats yields some unsurprising results for anyone who has seen the two of them play. By most conventional metrics, Cousins was better, posting a better passer rating, QBR, EPA/play, and completion percentage. Cousins also had a significantly lower interception percentage and sack percentage.
But in certain advanced stats, Darnold has outperformed Cousins. So far in 2024, Darnold has a higher TD percentage, a higher average air yards per attempt, and a much higher total rushing yards. In other words, Darnold is (as you might have guessed) a less accurate and less efficient passer than prime Cousins, but he is also more athletic and more explosive.
Prime Cousins could have likely had great success with a defense as skilled as the 2024 Vikings’ unit, and I personally think that the Vikings’ improvement on defense has a lot more to do with the players and the coaching than it does with the cap space saved from moving on to Sam Darnold.
But if you want to make a deep playoff run with a team that isn’t quite in the NFL’s top tier, there’s a strong case to be made for a high-variance QB like Darnold over a relatively steady performer like Cousins.
When Darnold and Cousins meet on Sunday, there will be plenty of drama over the Vikings’ decision to move on from the veteran this past offseason — especially if the Falcons come out on top. But Darnold has already proven himself to be the right choice for the 2024 Vikings, and with a strong finish and a successful postseason, Darnold may be able to overtake Cousins’s place in the pantheon of Vikings’ QBs in just a single season in purple.
Editor’s Note: Information from PFF and Pro Football Reference helped with this article.
#Tale #Sam #Darnold #Kirk #Cousins
