Three-hundred-twenty-three days after his Achilles tendon ruptured at Lambeau Field while playing for the Minnesota Vikings, quarterback Kirk Cousins engineered one of the most improbable game-winning drives in recent memory when he led the Atlanta Falcons 70 yards in 1:05 and fired a game-winning touchdown pass to Drake London with 34 seconds left for a 22-21 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night.
After a disastrous performance against the Steelers in his Falcons debut, Cousins showed up under the lights and completed 20-of-29 passes for 241 yards and two touchdowns. He wasn’t intercepted, didn’t fumble and he took only one sack. His passer rating was a majestic 117.2.
“I’m just trying to play football with my teammates and get out of here with a win. It’s so important to find ways to win,” Cousins said after the game. “That’s how you put together a great season, when you have these games that can go either way, you find a way to have it break your way. That’s the way this league is so when you can find those inches, it can really change the tale of the season.”
The Falcons had a 0.7% chance to win with 1:56 remaining in the fourth quarter and the result was the seventh-most unlikely win since 2016, according to NextGen Stats.
Cousins now has now led 31 fourth-quarter comebacks in his career, 17 of them when he played for the Vikings from 2018 to 2023. More impressive is that 29 of the 31 comebacks qualify as game-winning drives.
His first fourth-quarterback comeback in purple was at Lambeau Field in 2018 when he threw for 425 yards and four touchdowns. The game ended tied 29-29, but it was Cousins who was dropping footballs into small windows to make a tie possible. His first game-winning drive for the Vikings was Nov. 17, 2019 against Denver when he led the Vikings back from a 20-0 halftime deficit to win 27-23.
Cousins led the Vikings on three game-winning drives in 2020, four more in 2021 and then led the 13-win Vikings in 2022 on an astonishing eight game-winning drives. And who was it playing quarterback for the Vikings when they won in overtime at New Orleans in the 2019-20 Wild Card round? It was Cousins, of course.
For his career, Cousins is now 4-10 as the starting quarterback on Monday Night Football. and 13-20 in primetime games. Cousins has actually won two straight Monday Night Football games, having led the Vikings to a win over the 49ers in Week 7 last season. Six days later his Achilles ruptured in Green Bay.
His last two trips to Philadelphia were both primetime games with the Vikings. Last season, Cousins and the Vikings couldn’t overcome turnovers and fell 34-28 on Thursday Night Football in Week 2. In 2022, the Vikings were smoked by the Eagles on Monday night in Week 2, 24-7.
“I just try to go play football the best I can whether it’s noon on Sunday or a night game, no matter what day of the week it is,” Cousins said. “You just try to go play your best and let it go from there.”
The narrative that Cousins isn’t good in primetime has always been unfair. If Monday night was anything more than a football game, it was a reminder that Cousins can be as clutch as they come when the game is on the line in the fourth quarter.
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