It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout June, July, and August. We start off with the quarterbacks. Kirk Cousins is annually an underrated fantasy football commodity. What can we expect out of Captain Kirk if we go warp six toward him this season?
Kirk Cousins ADP and AAV:
Average Draft Position: QB14, 106
Average Auction Value: $1.6
Kirk Cousins Statistics:
| Year | G | GS | Att | Comp | Comp% | Yds | TD | Int | Comp/G | Att/G | Yds/G | TD/G | INT/G |
| 2021 | 16 | 16 | 372 | 561 | 66.3% | 4221 | 33 | 7 | 23.3 | 35.1 | 263.8 | 2.1 | 0.4 |
| 2020 | 16 | 16 | 516 | 349 | 67.6% | 4265 | 35 | 13 | 32.3 | 21.8 | 266.6 | 2.2 | 0.8 |
| 2019 | 15 | 15 | 444 | 307 | 69.1% | 3603 | 26 | 6 | 29.6 | 20.5 | 240.2 | 1.7 | 0.4 |
| Year | 4 PPTD | 6 PPTD | 4 PPTD/G | 6 PPTD/G | Year | Att | Yd | TD | YPC | Att/G | Yd/G | |
| 2021 | 300.3 | 366.3 | 18.8 | 22.89 | 2021 | 29 | 115 | 1 | 4.0 | 1.8 | 7.2 | |
| 2020 | 306.2 | 376.2 | 19.1 | 23.51 | 2020 | 32 | 156 | 1 | 4.9 | 2.0 | 9.8 | |
| 2019 | 244.4 | 296.4 | 16.3 | 19.76 | 2019 | 31 | 63 | 1 | 2.0 | 2.1 | 4.2 |
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | aDOT+ | Y/A | TD% | INT% | Sacks | Yds/Sack |
| 2021 | 4574 | 8.15 | 8.15 | 7.50 | 8.9% | 1.9% | 28 | 7.04 |
| 2020 | 4051 | 7.84 | 0.11 | 8.27 | 6.8% | 2.5% | 39 | 6.56 |
| 2019 | 3374 | 7.60 | -0.58 | 8.11 | 5.9% | 1.4% | 28 | 7.36 |
aDOT+ represents a player’s depth of target compared to the league average for that season. Air yards data is from FTNFantasy.com/air-yards
2022 Kirk Cousins Fantasy Football Overview:
Kirk Cousins has quietly been one of the more productive real-life NFL and fantasy football quarterbacks over the last couple of seasons. He’s third in yards per attempt, eighth in passing yards, and sixth in touchdowns, and his seven game-winning drives rank sixth among active quarterbacks in the last two seasons. He knows what he needs to do to succeed, and he does it. Fantasy football points tend to follow, though his ceiling is limited. While over half of his games have been QB1 games in the last couple of seasons, he has just 20 top-five games under his belt for his entire career.
The peak upside just doesn’t exist with Cousins, but he is one of the more consistently productive quarterbacks in the NFL, topping 4000 passing yards in every season wherein he played 16 games. He has at least 30 touchdowns in two-straight seasons and is one of six players who can say that (Josh Allen, Tom Brady, Justin Herbert, Patrick Mahomes, and Aaron Rodgers). He’s just solidly good at real-life football and fantasy football.
2022 Kirk Cousins Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Kirk Cousins Auction Value: $-
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet! (coming in early July)
Kirk Cousins is annually underrated. There, I said it. He is one of the best values in every single fantasy football draft, and we just let it happen. Why? Probably because he’s a dork. Like, sorry, but it’s true. He screamed YOU LIKE THAT, he offered to become a bubble boy to stop COVID-19 (after a vaccine was available) and he is the polo shirt tucked into pleated khaki shorts made human. And it’s because of this that his ADP rarely dips inside the top-150 players, and peaked in 2018 at pick 117 overall, as QB11. Since 2015, he’s finished outside the top-12 quarterbacks once, as QB18 in 2019. Things have only gotten better for Cousins over the last two seasons, scoring the tenth-most fantasy points per game (minimum 20 starts) and scoring as a QB1 literally more than half the time (18 times, 56.25% of games).
Yet, despite all of this, his ADP does not reflect his value. He is currently QB15 (pick 117 off of the board) in snake drafts and is just $2 in salary cap drafts. If you think about fantasy football drafts as places to get the most value, while avoiding negative values, you can’t go wrong getting Kirk Cousins at price. He’s literally beaten his ADP in six of the last seasons, and he’s done so by a significant margin. From a pure positive expected value perspective, you can’t go broke betting on Kirk Cousins at cost. If you want to get a solid contributor for dirt cheap, then Cousins is your guy. He doesn’t have the top-six upside of a Derek Carr, so he sits one spot behind Carr, because of his narrower range of outcomes. If you need a solid quarterback who isn’t going to tank your squad, then Cousins is your man.
Best Case Scenario:
Kirk Cousins destroys all expectations and Justin Jefferson finishes as the WR1 this year. Kirk Cousins is QB10.
Worst Case Scenario:
The new-look Vikings offense falls apart entirely and Kirk Cousins bottoms out. He finishes at QB14.
Check out all our 2022 player profiles, here.
If you would like our $7 Draft Kit, then follow this link!
For more analysis like these player profiles, check out these links!
Discord!
Podcast!
Patreon!
Twitch!
Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Kirk_Cousins.jpg under CC BY SA 2,0, cropped]
