Vikings coach, teammates highlight Kirk Cousins' grit after another comeback win

Kirk Cousins missed his first snap of the season on Sunday, after absorbing a shot to his midsection from Washington defensive tackle Daron Payne while firing a 47-yard, third-down pass to Justin Jefferson in the fourth quarter. Had Cousins realized he needed to shake off the hit sooner and run another play, he said, he could have done it.

"I was kind of like, 'I could jog down there and suck wind for a second, but I think we scored so I'm just going to lay here and kind of catch my breath,' " Cousins said. "And then [the Vikings medical staff was] like, 'No, he's down at the 10.' And I was like, 'Oh OK — I need to get up!' So I started jogging and they were like, 'You have to come out.' And I said, 'I figured. I figured.' "

After sitting out a play to satisfy NFL rules, Cousins was back on the field to finish the Vikings' field-goal drive. He played 65 of the team's 66 offensive snaps, walking off the FedEx Field grass with a 20-17 comeback victory over his old team. In the locker room afterward, teammates marveled at their quarterback's level of grit they felt sometimes goes unnoticed.

"He's a lot tougher than people have always [realized]," safety Harrison Smith said. "Like, no one ever talks about that, but like, this dude's tough. He gets knocked out for a play, and gets back in there."

Cousins is now in his eighth year as a starter. During that time, he has been available to his team more than almost any quarterback in the league.

Since he became a starter in 2015, Cousins has played 7,813 snaps, the third-most of any QB in the league behind Tom Brady and Matt Ryan.

Of the 45 quarterbacks who have logged at least 2,000 snaps — or roughly two seasons' worth of regular-season work — since 2015, no QB has played a higher percentage of his team's snaps than Cousins, who's been on the field 98% of the time.

After he suffered a cracked rib during a Monday night game in Chicago last December, Cousins showed up on the injury report for the first time since 2013; he played the following Sunday against the Rams. The game against the Packers he missed in January, after testing positive for COVID-19, was only the second he had missed since becoming a full-time starter; the first one came when the Vikings rested most of their starters for the 2019 regular-season finale after clinching a playoff spot.

On Sunday, he was sacked twice and hit 11 times on a day where the Commanders pressured him on 45.2% of his dropbacks, according to Pro Football Focus.

"The interior of that defensive line is pretty darn good," Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell said. "[Defensive end] Montez Sweat on the outside. They did some good things. They sent some timely secondary pressures, corner [blitzes]. We are seeing kind of the full gambit [in response] to some of our stuff. We've got to continue to do a good job handling some of that stuff throughout as we start to see it."

But the play to Jefferson was special to O'Connell.

"That was a critical third-and-7. We've got the matchup one-on-one, but Kirk knew he was going to have to pay for that one. ... But for him to stay in there and make that throw in that moment and only miss one snap — and really, it's just a league rule [that he had to come out]," O'Connell said. "But otherwise he wanted to stay in there and obviously go down there and finish that thing."

Danielle Hunter: The edge rusher was a consistent presence in the Commanders' backfield, sacking Washington quarterback Taylor Heinicke twice and hurrying him five more times. Hunter seems to be getting more comfortable in his new role with the Vikings; his work with Za'Darius Smith set up the Vikings' other sack, when D.J. Wonnum brought Heinicke down after Hunter and Smith pressured him.

Jordan Hicks: He finished with a team-high 12 tackles, and broke up two passes on a day where the Vikings' linebackers did a solid job of disrupting Heinicke's throwing lanes. One of Hicks' two breakups came when he got a hand in to keep Dyami Brown from catching a second-down pass in Vikings territory; the Vikings got a stop on the next play, forcing the Commanders to settle for a field goal for their first points.

The Vikings' number of unproductive plays: Not counting Dalvin Cook and Cousins' three runs for negative yardage to drain the clock and set up Greg Joseph's game-winning field goal, the team had 11 plays that went for no gain or lost yardage on Sunday.

Two of those plays were sacks — one where Payne beat Ed Ingram to get to Cousins, and another when Benjamin St.-Juste took the quarterback down on a corner blitz. The Vikings had four runs (three from Cook, one from Alexander Mattison) that lost yardage, and Cousins completed four passes that lost yardage, along with a screen to Mattison that went for no gain after Johnny Mundt blocked Bobby McCain into the running back.

The number of unproductive plays became especially problematic because so many of them happened on early downs. The Vikings had just four plays all day that gained more than 4 yards on first down; they had at least 8 yards to go on 15 of their 24 second-down plays. That's not a sustainable way to run an offense, or to keep defenses from bringing extra pressure after Cousins. If the Vikings want to win in Buffalo next week, they'll have to be more productive.