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By Madison Williams
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Kirk Cousins will make his official return to the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday when facing the Green Bay Packers. He was traded on Tuesday from the Las Vegas Raiders after starting in the first nine games of the season for them.
Speaking with ESPN's Mina Kimes ahead of Sunday's matchup, she seemed confident in Cousins's ability to readjust to the Vikings' game plan, especially since he spent six seasons there previously.
“The benefit of [Cousins coming back] is we’ve seen it, we know what it looks like. He knows the offense," Kimes said in an interview with Newsweek. "Going to be a lot of under-center play action, throwing over the middle of the field. Things that they just haven’t been able to do this year with the quarterbacks at their disposal. He’s a very good fit for [head coach] Kevin O’Connell’s offense. And, he’s been playing really good ball in Vegas.”
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When Cousins got traded back to Minnesota this past week, there was a question posed of whether the Vikings should've just kept Cousins all along. He originally was signed by the Atlanta Falcons in 2024 in free agency, but his tenure there wasn't very successful.
Kimes made a good argument for why this trade was the best-case scenario for the Vikings to bring Cousins back. His time with the Vikings ended in 2023 prematurely as he tore his Achilles mid-season. He needed to find himself again before leading the Vikings again.
“The reality is, after he got hurt, he really was not himself for the first year and a half or so, so I don’t think it made sense for them to keep him. But now he returns to them a lot closer to who he was when he left," Kimes said. "I think right away it’s going to look pretty good.”
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Kimes used Next Gen Trends to discuss the ins and outs of Sunday's matchup. This is a newly accessible tool for fans to use on NFL.com to track the trends in various statistical categories for their favorite teams.
The "NFL Live" contributor highlighted the playoff implications the Vikings versus Packers matchup has attached to it. It's a big game for the NFC North as a whole.
“If the Vikings win this game, Next Gen Trends has them with an 89% chance of making the playoffs, and if they lose, it drops to 66%. So, it’s a pretty big game," Kimes said. "It will be hard for the other teams in the NFC North, which is obviously stacked, to make up ground if [the Vikings] win this game.”
This may put more pressure on Cousins as he returns to the field. It won't be an easy challenge for him by any means as Kimes also highlighted how impressive the Packers' defense has been this season.
“It’s not an easy matchup. I think this is kind of crazy—the Packers right now are 10th in EPA [expected points added] per play on defense," Kimes said. "It’s kind of shocking that they’ve gotten there without [edge rusher] Micah Parsons.”
The 6-3 Packers will host the 6-2 Vikings on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. All eyes will be on Cousins.
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