Kirk Cousins played his first game for the Minnesota Vikings in three years on Sunday, at the stadium where he tore his Achilles tendon in October 2023. Four days after he rejoined the team, he completed 21 of 31 passes for 207 yards and two touchdowns in a 30-10 win over the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. The Vikings (7-2) swept the season series. The Packers fell to 6-4.
The Vikings defense sacked Jordan Love eight times and forced four turnovers. Minnesota turned the ball over once and held the ball for 35 minutes and 16 seconds.
O’Connell: “Ran the show incredibly clean”
Head coach Kevin O’Connell, who named him the starter on Friday, said the Vikings played “complementary football” for “one of the first times this year.” He listed the field position, the rushing battle, the turnover battle and time of possession. “There’s a lot of things that as a football team we talk a lot about that we were able to kind of, you know, come in here and really, really apply,” he said.
On Cousins, he said: “He was the one with the ownership of the plan and just brought a certain amount of poise, leadership, execution, ran the show incredibly clean and I just can’t say enough about him. And I know everybody on our organization felt it this week.” He said having Cousins on the field “only helped” young players who have stepped into big roles and named tight end Gavin Bartholomew and wide receivers Myles Price and Tai Felton among them. Wide receiver Jordan Addison was out with a thumb injury.
Asked about the “calming influence” Cousins had, O’Connell said there were times late in the week, “even on the weekend,” when the coaches asked for something new. “Hey, I think we might need this now. Okay, great. Whatever you want. Yeah, I’ll have it,” O’Connell said of Cousins’ answers. “It was just every time.” He said it “bodes well for the comfort level, hopefully he has with me calling plays.”
Cousins: “The people who put the wind at our back”
Cousins threw a 38-yard touchdown pass to Myles Price on third-and-23 late in the first quarter. On the previous play, the Packers accepted a 15-yard face-mask penalty that wiped out an incompletion on third-and-8 and pushed the Vikings back to the Green Bay 38. In the fourth quarter, Gavin Bartholomew broke a tackle on a 20-yard touchdown catch. Aaron Jones Sr. ran for a 1-yard score, Will Reichard made three field goals and Justin Jefferson caught nine passes for 74 yards. Cousins threw one interception, to Xavier McKinney before halftime.
“Just felt an ability today to really lean on the people around me. Coaches, teammates,” Cousins said. He called Price’s catch a “big time play” and said the receiver kept “his body control and balance and turn it into six points,” and he said the same about Bartholomew breaking a tackle. “It makes a big difference when guys do that,” he said. He credited O’Connell and the staff for getting “the plays in quickly” and said, “A lot of credit goes to the people who put the wind at our back today.”
Eight sacks and “the good old-fashioned way”
The Vikings forced a fumble on the second play of the game, when Andrew Van Ginkel knocked the ball loose from Mark Redman after a short catch and recovered it at the Green Bay 10. Dallas Turner recovered a fumbled snap in the third quarter, and rookie Jake Golday recovered a kickoff fumble forced by Jakobe Thomas in the fourth. Harrison Smith intercepted Love in the end zone. Levi Drake Rodriguez had two of the eight sacks.
O’Connell said the blitz packages are only part of it. “The thing that our guys maybe don’t get enough credit for, the actual players, is winning one-on-one pass rush when we are just bringing four,” he said. He said defensive coordinator Brian Flores “did a great job balancing it today, mixing and matching.” “Even if it may look, and the presentation of it may look like a lot, there’s still guys just winning the good old-fashioned way too,” he said.
Asked about Bud Grant, the Hall of Fame coach who died in 2023, O’Connell said: “I miss him. I wish I could still spend the time with him. And I’ll forever be grateful for the one year I did get with him.” He said Grant “is certainly my hero” in the team’s history. “It’s a hard place to come win, it’s a divisional win in the NFC at Lambeau Field,” he said. “I’m sure Coach Grant would have been proud of our performance today.”
LaFleur: “This is a humbling league”
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur opened his press conference by calling it a “whooping.” “This is a humbling league, and today we got humbled,” he said. “Anytime you spot them and turn the ball over four times to their one, that’s a recipe for disaster.” He said, “We didn’t coach well enough and certainly didn’t go out there and execute well enough.”
He said the pass protection had “a couple of busts,” including one where the Packers did not block Van Ginkel off the edge. “I was trying to rack my brain during the game, trying to, like, call anything that could get the ball out of his hands in a timely fashion,” he said. Asked why the Packers did not use more of their quick passing game until the second half, he said: “It’s obviously a bad decision because our quarterback was getting abused just like he did in the first game.”
On the third-and-23 touchdown, he said accepting the penalty made sense because a Vikings field goal from there would have been 56 yards. “I think you got to roll the dice there, and certainly that was a pivotal play in the game,” he said. “We can’t get beat in third and 23.” He called Flores’ defense “ultra aggressive” and said, “There’s a lot of football in front of us, right? Seven guaranteed games.”
Love: “Definitely frustrated”
Love completed 17 of 27 passes for 220 yards, with a 32-yard touchdown pass to J. Michael Sturdivant in the third quarter. He said the Vikings did not show anything the Packers had not seen on film. “It’s a very unique defense,” he said. “They bring a lot of different personnel groupings. They bring a lot of different, you know, looks up front, so it’s really trying to identify who we’re sliding to.” He said, “It’s not all just the line. We gotta have better concepts to be able to get those balls out quicker. I gotta do a better job of finding where I can go with the ball.”
On the interception, he said he missed Tucker Kraft inside. “Easy play for Harrison Smith right there, but just a miss,” he said. Asked whether the Packers are behind in the NFC playoff race, he said: “Oh, for sure.” “We’ve dropped the ball in three of these games,” he said, counting two losses to the Vikings and one to the Lions. “We’re six and four,” he said. “I’m very confident in this team still.”
The Packers posted their full postgame press conferences with LaFleur and Love.
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