Minnesota Vikings: 3 Standouts vs. Falcons in Week 1
3. Kirk Cousins
The first standout player for Minnesota in its season-opening victory over Atlanta was Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins. Cousins didn’t wow everyone with his statistics in the win, but he was solid enough to pace the offense throughout the course of the game.
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Cousins, who is in his second season with Minnesota in 2019, finished the game under center completing eight passes on 10 attempts to grab a quarterback rating of 140.8. With a total of 98 yards passing, Cousins recorded one touchdown pass when he found Adam Thielen for a touchdown in the opening half in Minneapolis.
Although his performance wasn’t eye-popping and he didn’t blow open the game by airing out the ball within the passing game, Cousins managed the game well and didn’t make any mistakes within the offense in the victory.
The most important thing when it came to Cousins’ performance was that he didn’t turn the ball over at all throughout the course of the game.
In his second season with the Vikings, Cousins is hoping to lead Minnesota back to the postseason in 2019 after missing the playoffs in his first year with the franchise a year ago.
In 2018, Cousins finished the campaign with 4,298 total passing yards, completing 425 of his 606 passing attempts to gather a completion percentage of 70.1 percent. Along with a career-high 30 touchdowns, Cousins also threw just 10 interceptions during his 16 appearances in purple and gold.
On Sunday afternoon, Cousins did a nice job of avoiding any pressure he faced while managing the offense well and spreading the ball around when his team needed him to. Even though he didn’t throw for over 100 yards in the contest, Cousins stepped up when his number was called and helped lead Minnesota to a solid Week 1 win.
Moving forward, Cousins will have games where he will need to be more aggressive and will be forced to throw the ball more than he did against Atlanta, but he has shown in the past that he is capable of doing so and can step up to that challenge when called upon.