Kirk Cousins (QB, MIN) - 2019 Fantasy Football Sleeper

BALLER MOVE: Target Around ~130 Overall

Current ADP: ~145

In 2018, Kirk Cousins finished as the fantasy QB13, which is just at the edge of the QB1 tier. So why did Fantasy Football Twitter collectively decide that Cousins was a complete bust last season?

Well, Cousins had gotten a lot of hype behind him when he went to Minnesota. He'd finished as a top-10 fantasy quarterback three years in a row in Washington, on a team that was decidedly worse than the one he was joining, so the Cousins hype skyrocketed. He went from being a very under-the-radar fantasy option to an overrated one really swiftly. He finished his first year in Minnesota just 16th among quarterbacks in fantasy points per game.

Last year, we all thought he was heading for a break out season and finally started to draft him like a top-10 quarterback and then...that didn't happen. Him making huge money didn't help him avoid the "overrated" tag either.

Cousins threw for under 300 yards in seven of Minnesota's final eight games, including a pair of games with under 200 yards. For a quarterback who very rarely makes things happen with his legs, you need Cousins to be consistently throwing 300 or so yards if you want to get the kind of production from him that you expect. But with the season on the line, Cousins just repeatedly couldn't get it done. He had just four games all season with three or more touchdowns and the Vikings faltered in their quest to make the playoffs.

But if you dig into things some, you'll find that Cousins was more-or-less the same quarterback he was in Washington.

First off, Cousins actually had the highest completion percentage of his career last year at 70.1 percent. That was higher than when he led the NFL in completion percentage in 2015 and ranked only below Drew Brees this past season. Accuracy wasn't Cousins' issue; he had the NFL's sixth-best accuracy rating and was second in true completion percentage.

He threw for 30 touchdowns, the most he has ever thrown for, and he finished ninth in the NFL in touchdown passes.

One basic question to ask is this: Will Kirk Cousins outperform his QB19 ranking? Considering he's always outperformed that number, the easy answer is "yeah, he's going to be better than QB19."