Top 5 deep-ball passers in the NFL entering the 2020 season
By Dustin Baker
4. Kirk Cousins, Minnesota Vikings
40+ Yard Completions in 2019: 11
Percentage to Total Pass Attempts: 2.47
A bizarre and prevalent narrative that swirls around the league and its talking heads is that Minnesota Vikings quarterback is a checkdown-happy quarterback. This implies that Kirk Cousins throws underneath rather than deep. The narrative is false.
Since 2016, Kirk Cousins leads all NFL passers with 143 completions of 25 yards or more. He also led all players during the 2019 season in 50+ yard touchdown throws. The man is not a dink-and-dunk style quarterback.
This analysis proves the opposite, in fact. Cousins delivered 11 completions of 40 yards or more in 2019. As a sheer volume metric, this ranked sixth-most in the NFL. But the Vikings passed the football comparatively seldom.
Last season, Minnesota had the third-fewest passing attempts of all teams in the business. Only the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens threw the football less. However, when the Vikings did throw it, Cousins had a verifiable tendency to connect deep.
On the other end of these passes was generally wideout Stefon Diggs, a player since traded to the Buffalo Bills. What’s more, Cousins’ five touchdown passes of 40+ yards ranked third-best in the league.
To compensate for Diggs’ departure east, Minnesota spent first-round draft capital on a wide receiver from LSU, Justin Jefferson. Between him and veteran Adam Thielen, the two seek to replicate Diggs’ deep-ball success in 2020.