9 stats that show just how well Kirk Cousins is playing
Before Kirk Cousins helped lead the Redskins to a 20-14 win over the Giants on Sunday, NFL Network analyst Brian Billick offered his thoughts on the Washington quarterback.
“He’s a touchdown-for-interception guy, that’s the definition of a backup,” Billick said, via NFL.com. “You need to make a quarterback that can make plays outside of the design of the offense. … Kirk Cousins is just a good solid guy and unfortunately for Washington, they’re going to need a lot more.”
Billick won a Super Bowl as coach of the Ravens with a touchdown-for-interception guy. Trent Dilfer, who threw 16 more interceptions than touchdowns over his 13-year career, threw 12 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in eight regular season starts after taking over for Tony Banks in 2000. While the Redskins’ defense is nowhere near as good as the dominating, Ray Lewis-led Ravens defense of that season, Cousins’s numbers, especially of late, are hardly Dilfer-esque.
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Consider these starter-quality stats, many of which were provided by the team:
111.5: Cousins’s passer rating since Week 7, which leads the NFL. Via ESPN’s John Keim, Cousins has completed 117 of 164 passes (71 percent) for 1,467 yards, 10 touchdowns and two interceptions in his last five games.
8.95: Cousins’s yards per attempt during that span, via CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora. Carson Palmer and Ben Roethlisberger lead the NFL this season with 8.8 yards per attempt. The return of Cousins’s biggest deep threat, DeSean Jackson, has no doubt helped.
91.7: Cousins’s QB rating for the season, which, while hardly a perfect measure, is better than Cam Newton, Matt Ryan and Ryan Tannehill among others. It also ranks Cousins fifth on the Redskins’s single-season passer rating list among quarterbacks with at least 12 touchdown passes, behind Robert Griffin III, Mark Rypien, Joe Theismann and Sammy Baugh.
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10-0: Cousins’s touchdown-to-interception ratio during the Redskins’ first five-game home winning streak within a single season in 24 years. He’s completed 127 of 167 passes (76 percent) for 1,436 yards in his last five games at FedEx Field. During Washington’s six-game home winning streak in 1991, Rypien completed 96 of 152 passes (63 percent) for 11 touchdowns and four interceptions.
4: The number of times Cousins has thrown for at least 300 yards this year, the most by a Redskins quarterback in a season since Brad Johnson in 1999.
3: Consecutive home games, including the comeback he led against Tampa Bay and a record-setting performance against the Saints, in which Cousins has eclipsed 300 yards passing. He’s the first Redskins quarterback to accomplish that feat since at least 1960.
11: Consecutive games with a touchdown pass for Cousins, who is tied with Rypien for the fourth-longest streak in franchise history since 1960. Cousins is the first Redskins quarterback to open a season with at least one touchdown pass in his first 11 games since Jurgensen in 1967. Jurgensen threw a touchdown in all 14 games that season and owns the franchise record with a touchdown pass in 23 consecutive games.
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68.4: Cousins’s completion percentage, which ranks third in the NFL. Via Chuck Sapienza, Cousins is on pace to break Griffin’s franchise record for completion percentage (65.65) in a season among quarterbacks with at least 10 starts.
34: Career touchdown passes for Cousins, who tied Patrick Ramsey for 14th on the team’s all-time list. That’s not really something worth bragging about, but Cousins has done it in eight fewer games and four fewer starts.
(Thanks to Pro Football Reference.)
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