Minnesota’s special 13-4 season ended in a not-so-special way, with quarterback Kirk Cousins passing the ball several yards on the wrong side of the line to gain on fourth and eight against the Giants. Cousins addressed the fateful postseason decision during the Quarterback series on Netflix.
“When you throw it short of the sticks like that and he’s tackled, you know, you get a lot of grief for it,” Cousins said. “But Justin [Jefferson] was doubled, and just instinctively it felt careless to just throw it to him with the game on the line like that.”
Cousins then acknowledged that he was left with “two bad options": throw to tight end T.J. Hockenson when he had no chance to get a first down or take a sack.
So why not just throw to Jefferson? And so what if he was doubled? He has proven that he can rise to the moment and get the ball in a situation like that.
The show includes a wide angle demonstrating that Jefferson was indeed double-teamed. But Jefferson had exploded off the ball, and it looked as if the safety was about to get caught flat-footed by rushing too aggressively toward Jefferson’s path.
Maybe there was a clue regarding the safety’s habit in those situations lurking in the hours of film created by the New York defense throughout the 2022 season. Maybe Cousins should have, or could have, detected something that would have allowed him to believe that the safety possibly would misplay the ball in that spot. Or that the safety simply wasn’t good enough to deal with a talent like Jefferson with not just the game but the season on the line.
Great quarterbacks make big throws in big spots. Cousins opted not to even try to make a potentially big throw in the biggest spot of the season.
Bottom line? If Cousins’s instincts told him it was too reckless to throw the ball to Jefferson in that moment, Cousins would be wise to recalibrate his instincts before a moment like that happens again.
