The Top 12 Worst Games of 2021: IV

Vikings at Bears, Week 15: Cousins-Fields Is Not the Next Manning-Brady

Mac Jones was the best rookie passer of 2021, but Justin Fields came dangerously close to being available for the Pats at the fifteenth overall pick. We have to think that had the Ohio State passer gotten to spend his first NFL year in Foxborough instead of Chicago, he’d have had a much, much better year than he did in the Windy City. Obscured by more jaw-dropping awfulness from picks named Lawrence, Wilson and Mills, Fields’ 1,870 yards, 7 passing touchdowns and 10 interceptions in 10 starts would easily qualify as the worst rookie outing in many other seasons that saw a bevy of young QBs take the reins. But the 2021 Vikings defense was very bad, and provided Fields, who did not play in the final 3 weeks of 2021, a cushy final outing to give Chitown fans some hope. But we must reiterate – it was all for naught in Chicago, as Fields’ best day as a pro to this point equated to only 9 points and sixty minutes of tastelessly blasé ball.

Let’s be even more charitable to Justin Fields than we probably need to be: at one point in this game, very late into the fourth quarter when the final result was unchangeably decided, the Bears had 285 total yards of offense. As you’ll see if you read the above paragraph, that equals the entire passing yardage total tallied by Mr. Fields on this day. So he was the entire offense. Much like Russell Wilson was known to do in 2017, Fields accounted for such a disproportionately high amount of his team’s total offense that it seemed when one looked at the yardage amounts he was the pigskin equivalent of the sole actor in a poorly-cast Chicago Theater production of, say, Patrick Stewart’s mono-actor rendition of A Christmas Carol (which is fitting, since the hilariously grandiose pregame cinematic for this contest was a weirdly holiday-tinged patchwork of 20th century American history interspliced with “memorable” moments from the Vikings-Bears rivalry; the reader is challenged to name one of these moments). And an issue we touched on much earlier with Saquon Barkley again rears its depressingly ineffective head: David Montgomery actually ran well in this game, showing Leveon Bell-like patience in navigating LOS blocking gaps and slugging forward on numerous runs while several tacklers essayed to bring him down, but from a macro standpoint he gave the team a paucity of potency, gaining only 60 yards on 18 carries. On another note, it would be impossible for me to be an eyeball statistician; I’d definitely have guessed based on the game tape alone that he went over 100. This is why we have technology.

Rather than performing the cursory eyeball statistician work that I am clearly not qualified for, I chose, as I always do when writing these entries, to peruse the databases of Pro Football Reference. I was quite amazed to discover that the team that passed for almost 300 yards without an interception was the one that lost by 8 points. Of course, I wasn’t that surprised, as I watched this game live and saw with my own eyes the nauseous brew of late-year non-Packer NFC North football that tends to haunt television sets across America beginning with the customary Lions Thanksgiving doomfest; what I was surprised by was just how bad the Kirk Cousins’ numbers were. The man had 87 passing yards on 24 attempts. That’s TOTAL passing yards – when you factor in the 4 sacks he succumbed to throughout the game, he barely cleared 60. The Vikings weren’t exactly trying to break any passing records this night, it’s true – they ran the ball 33 times in the game – but an experienced field general like Kirk Cousins really should be doing better than this against the 22nd-ranked scoring defense of 2021. Like a pitcher on a cold streak, he just didn’t have “it” this night – both his physical and instinctual faculties seemed stunted on a freezing evening that recalled those supposedly legendary Vikes-Bears highlights the magniloquent pregame cinematic saw fit to rhapsodize. 40 of his yards came in the first quarter. And even though the by this point doomed Mike Zimmer probably just wanted to play a few more games of Zim Ball™ before being shown the door, we must wonder whether that really made sense: Dalvin Cook handled the football on the ground a massive 28 times and only gained 89 yards. Kene Nwangwu, small sample size notwithstanding, was the better runner on the night, making the most of his 3 carries by rumbling for 33 yards. No receiver, it goes without saying, went over 50 yards; only 2 pass catchers had more than 10.

Zimmer’s strategy was unattractive to this viewer’s eye, but was clearly informed by Cousins’ spectacularly erratic play. In one incredible two-play sequence, Kirk held the ball for far too long and fumbled off of a Robert Quinn sack (did you know Quinn had 18.5 sacks in 2021?), only retaining possession because of a diving recovery by Christian Darrisaw. Then on the next play, he threw what will almost certainly be remembered as the worst pass of his entire career, a downfield disaster so ill-advised it is amazing he didn’t become the second quarterback flagged for intentional grounding after throwing an interception. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a thing of hideous beauty – a throw that for all intents and purposes looked like a confident one when Kirk delivered it but wound up in the hands of Bear defender Deon Bush that was the only player in frame when he plucked it out of the winter air. Bush caught the thing like it was a punt. I mean, it sort of was. But this was probably the high mark for the Bears on the day, as the rest of the day was spent meandering around, usually in their own end of the field, for pointless yards that rarely threatened the enemy endzone.

So who exactly was the MVP this evening? I’d say that neither quarterback warranted even passing mention, Fields’ raw numbers be damned. As we’ve seen, the running backs failed to impress overmuch either. Without a whole lot of dynamic wide receiver performances either, we’re excluding them. I guess the whole Vikings defense could get a pass, but they did give up a Hail Mary on the final play of the game to surrender a touchdownless game. As with so many other awful games, Hail Mary confusion was a hallmark of this game too: Cousins had a chance at a Hail Mary too, but at the end of the half, the guy decided to throw the ball OUT OF BOUNDS instead of hitting the endzone. What gives? No, no, no single player on offense or defense deserves such an honor. Instead, we’re splitting it 50/50 a la Super Bowl XII: punters Jordan Berry (7 punts for 295 yards) and Pat O’Donnell (3 for 161 – an average of 53.7 yards per punt!) get to split the MVP car. One of them gets the rear wheels and spoiler, the other gets the engine. Fitting, since the two offenses they attempted to minimize the ineptitude of both looked like they were operating without crucial mechanic parts in a poorly-designed and repair-needy machine. Hopefully the two new coaches helming the command center of these stalled vehicles can induce more liveliness in 2022.

This wasn’t a punt.