The Minnesota Vikings beat their bitter rivals, the Green Bay Packers on Sunday 24-10. The win was the team’s fourth win in five games after starting the season 0-3. It pushed the team to .500 on the season and moved them to 2-0 within the division. The team is in the playoff picture and rolling.
All of this should be cause for celebration, but this is a somber victory Monday after the injury to Kirk Cousins.
With the Vikings rolling and the game all but in-hand, Cousins dropped back to pass on a fairly innocuous play in early in the fourth quarter. As Cousins stepped up to buy time, he hopped and just a few minutes later we could see the full extent.
Cousins came up hobbling and was quickly ruled out with an ankle injury. After the game, it was reported that Cousins had suffered an Achilles injury — which will likely be confirmed today by MRI. Cousins will likely miss the rest of the season, and now Minnesota is left with a bevy of questions at the position.
In spite of the devastating injury to Cousins, the Vikings still walked away with a win. It may be hard to remember in the wake of the Cousins injury, but there was a lot of good that happened on Sunday, too. Let’s take a look at the good, bad and (obvious) ugly from Sunday’s game.
The good: Cousins-to-Addison connection
For the Vikings, everything begins and ends with the passing attack. They’ve been one of the best passing teams in the NFL for the past few years, and that hasn’t changed this season, despite the rough start record-wise. Cousins has continued to be one of the best, and most prolific, quarterbacks in the league, and his favorite target as of late has been rookie Jordan Addison.
Addison showed flashes of the ability to lead a wide receiver group throughout the early season, turning in solid performances in since day one. But it was last week where Addison really stepped up and introduced himself to the NFL world at large. The Cousins-to-Addison connection was special against the 49ers, and that connection was just as good Sunday against the Packers.
Addison was the main target for Cousins against the 49ers, and while the ball was more spread out this week, Addison was still able to make a significant impact on the offense. He made a couple of spectacular catches, including one near-catch where he was blasted by a Packers defender, and notched seven receptions for 82 yards and a touchdown.
The touchdown put Addison at seven touchdowns for the season. That catch put Addison as just the sixth player in NFL history — and first in Vikings history — with seven touchdowns in his first eight games. Were it not for Puka Nacua for the Rams, we might be talking about Addison as the best receiver from the 2023 NFL draft class.
The bad: Running game continues to struggle
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Minnesota Vikings struggled to run the ball on Sunday. It’s been a broken record this season, and it reared its ugly head again this week. The team seems to have fixed their issues with turnovers, now it’s just the lack of a running game that is holding this team back.
Starting running back Alexander Mattison in particular really struggled to get going against the Packers defense on Sunday. Despite being the team’s leading rusher and seeing the bulk of the action, Mattison was only able to reach 31 yards on 16 carries, for a paltry 1.9 yards per carry.
Cam Akers wasn’t able to be much of a change-of-pace for the Vikings offense, either. Akers only ran the ball nine times on Sunday, and was only able to pick up 19 yards. His per carry average was just slightly better than Mattison’s at 2.1, but neither player was running the ball at a clip you would want to see from an NFL rushing attack.
As a team, the Vikings only had 60 yards on the ground, with Cousins boasting the best per carry average at 4.5 yards. To the team’s credit, they were finally able to get a rushing touchdown on the board, with Cam Akers finally ending the streak.
If the Vikings are going to do anything going forward without Cousins, the rushing attack is going to need to figure things out — and they’re going to need to do it quickly. They no long have the luxury of a potent passing attack to bail them out.
The good: K.J. Osborn breakout
For the second week in a row, the Vikings have gotten a breakout performance from one of their wide receivers. Last week it was rookie standout Addison saying hello to the league in a big way with over 100 yards and two touchdowns. This week it was running mate K.J. Osborn’s turn to show the league what he can do.
Osborn had been relegated to a third-or-fourth option in the Vikings offense for much of the season, seeing limited production so far. That changed in a big way on Sunday against the Packers. Osborn played a much more active roll in the gameplan, and he rewarded the team’s faith in him with some big plays when the team needed it most.
For his part on Sunday, Osborn hauled in eight receptions, two shy of a career high, and was just one yard shy of just his third 100-yard receiving game of his career.
The Vikings offense has been firing on all cylinders the past few weeks, even in spite of not having their top wide receiver Justin Jefferson on the field. Under normal circumstances, that would bode well for Jefferson’s return to the offense, but in the wake of the Cousins news, that excitement has to be at least somewhat tempered.
The ugly: Kirk Cousins' injury
There’s no way around it, the dominant story from the Vikings win against the Packers is the loss of quarterback Kirk Cousins. Despite being the subject of trade rumors all season, Cousins has been one of the top quarterbacks in the league, and has been instrumental in the Vikings recent surge.
Cousins was having another typically good day against the Packers, completing roughly 74% of his passes for a shade under 300 yards and two touchdowns before leaving the game with the Achilles injury.
Now, the Vikings are left with a ton of questions at the position, both in the short- and long-term. Will the Vikings opt to roll with Jaren Hall as the starter for the remainder of the season, or do they make a move to bring someone in? If they’re going to bring someone in, will they sign a free agent to compete with Hall, or are they going to swing big and try to pull off a trade before the deadline?
Looking ahead, is this an injury that an aging Kirk Cousins can come back from and be the quarterback he has been throughout his career? Does it change the outlook on his career with the Vikings one way or the other? How does this injury impact the front office’s decisions on the position for 2024 and beyond?
We’re not going to have any of those answers in the immediate future, but Minnesota is going to have to start answering them quickly. It’s an unfortunate situation to be sure, but the NFL is a ‘next-man-up’ league, and for right now that man is Hall.
