How Green Bay Packers can pressure Vikings QB Kirk Cousins without injured RB Dalvin Cook

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The NFL injury gods appear ready to smile on the Green Bay Packers yet again this season.

The Packers have a huge game at Minnesota Monday night with the chance to lock up the NFC North title and, more importantly, become a great bet for a first-round bye in the playoffs. And the Vikings won’t have their best offensive player, running back Dalvin Cook. He was ruled out with a shoulder injury.

The Packers already have ridden their extraordinarily good health to an 11-3 record. They’ve lost only six starters games to injuries (four for Davante Adams, two for Darnell Savage) and have no key players on IR.

They’ve also caught some teams missing a star: the Kansas City Chiefs without their MVP quarterback (Patrick Mahomes) and two best pass rushers (Chris Jones and Frank Clark), Carolina without quarterback Cam Newton and the Chicago Bears last week without inside linebacker Roquan Smith.

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Cook has been unable to finish two of the Vikings’ last three games because of shoulder and chest injuries.

While Cook’s absence Monday night guarantees nothing for the Packers, it puts the onus of the offense on quarterback Kirk Cousins.

Cook ranks No. 3 in the NFL in yards from scrimmage and is the hub around which the Vikings’ offense revolves. The Vikings’ other backs have run the ball just fine – backup Alexander Mattison averages 4.5 yards a carry, though he likely will be unavailable because of an ankle injury, and No. 3 back Mike Boone averages 4.6 yards. But defenses don’t have to game plan stopping them like they do Cook.

You can be sure the Vikings still will at least try to pound the ball even if Cook and Mattison don’t play. That’s the reason coach Mike Zimmer brought in Gary Kubiak this year to oversee the offense. Zimmer wanted someone who will stick with the run game, and Kubiak will make sure of that even though he doesn’t call plays.

The Vikings, in fact, are the second-most run-oriented team in the NFL with a 50-50 run-pass split – it’s actually 50.1 percent pass, according to Team Rankings sports data. They were the fourth-heaviest pass offense last season at 64.4 percent.

But how’s that going to work for the full 60 minutes without one of the premier backs in the league, and a great dual threat at that? And what does that mean for Cousins?

The 31-year-old Cousins is having his best season by almost any measure – he’s No. 4 in the NFL in passer rating (111.1), No. 4 in yards per attempt (8.4) and No. 4 in interception percentage (1.2 percent). He survived a bad start – 2-2 in the season’s first month – to get the Vikings to 10-4 and in great position for a playoff berth. He’d never won more than nine games in a season before this.

But he has never been a quarterback who can carry a team, no matter how much he’s paid, and he ranked No. 16 in Mike Sando’s annual quarterback survey of league executives and coaches for The Athletic. Cook and Kubiak have been a godsend for him.

Cousins has good NFL arm talent – an above-average arm, touch and accuracy, and throws a good deep ball. He also has a good receiving corps with Adam Thielen back last weekend from a hamstring injury, along with Stefon Diggs (60 catches, 17.9-yard average) and a tight end, Kyle Rudolph, who has an exceptional catch radius because of his skill catching the ball one-handed.

But without Cook, Cousins might be more like the guy he was last season than the one he has been the past couple months. Mike Pettine, the Packers’ defensive coordinator, now can focus his game plan on Cousins.

Last season Cousins played well against the Packers – he had a 123.5 rating in a win and tie. But in Week 2 this year, only his second game with Kubiak, Cousins had a bad day (52.9) and threw a mind-boggling interception with the game on the line.

It came with the Packers leading 21-16 and the Vikings facing first-and-goal from the Packers’ 8 with a little more than five minutes left. Off a play action fake Dean Lowry pressured Cousins out of the pocket, and as Cousins escaped to his right he floated a pass to Diggs in the back corner of the end zone even though the receiver had no room and was double covered. Kevin King was gifted the interception.

Credit Cousins and Kubiak for rebounding from the bad first month to help the Vikings get to 10-4. But it’s worth noting Cook scored on a 75-yard touchdown run against the Packers and has been the guy defenses have been gearing to stop all season.

This week Cousins can knock the Packers from the No. 2 seeding in the NFC playoffs. But can he do it without Cook?