Kirk Cousins has a certain amount of wisdom as the second-oldest of the 14 starting quarterbacks in this year's NFL playoff field.
The 34-year-old Viking kind of shrugged — politely, of course — when asked this week to imagine what 23-year-old rookie seventh-round draft pick Brock Purdy of the 49ers is going through as the unexpected starter on the league's hottest team the past five weeks and again in Saturday's wild-card weekend opener against Seattle.
"It's a team game," said the guy who's been trying to pound that into our thick melons for a decade as his career record lingered around .500 before rocketing upward in a 13-4 season that has his No. 3-seeded Vikings hosting the No. 6-seeded Giants on Sunday. "I think [Purdy] has done a phenomenal job."
One could sense a respectful "but" coming.
"To win however many in a row just shows that they have a really good football team," Cousins said of San Francisco's 10-game winning streak. "That's really what it's all about."
Quarterback is a big piece, obviously. But it's far from the whole puzzle.
Purdy's counterpart Saturday is 32-year-old Geno Smith, the third-oldest playoff QB. If quarterbacks were all that mattered, Smith and the Seahawks would be sitting at home watching Russell Wilson and the Broncos in the postseason.
Instead, the early returns on last year's blockbuster trade looks thusly: Denver is awful, looking for a new head coach again and worried about striking an overzealous deal that guaranteed the 34-year-old Wilson, who was terrible this season, $245 million. Meanwhile, Seattle is in the playoffs and owns the fifth overall draft pick via the Broncos. Smith had a career year on a cheap one-year deal and is likely to earn NFL Comeback Player of the Year for no other reason than he's coming back from nine seasons as a disappointing second-round draft pick of the Jets.
