Kirk Cousins isn’t very mobile. Line up the 32 starting quarterbacks and have them race 40 yards, and he’d be in the bottom third. And he’s also the league’s lightest starting quarterback. With that in mind, should we trust him to again come anywhere close to scoring 5 rushing touchdowns?
It’s unusual for what you would call an immobile quarterback to score 4-plus rushing touchdowns. And when it happens, those guys don’t tend to come back and do it again.
By my count (and I think I’ve got them all) 10 times in the last 25 years, a quarterback has scored 4 or more rushing touchdowns while running for under 120 yards. (Cousins last year ran for only 48 yards).
Of the previous 10, only one came back the next year and scored 4 TDs. Scott Mitchell. Marc Bulger and Peyton Manning scored 3 TDs each.
The other seven scored 1 TD. Combined.
So while Cousins scored 5 TDs last year (over half of the rushing touchdowns scored by his team) I’m figuring he’ll be lucky if he scores more than 2 TDs this year. If they were setting an over-under on him in Vegas, probably 1.5 TDs would be the number.
| IMMOBILE QBs WITH 4+ TD RUNS (next year) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | Att | Yards | Avg | TD |
| 1992 | Stan Humphries, S.D. | 8 | 37 | 4.6 | 0 |
| 1995 | Scott Mitchell, Det. | 37 | 83 | 2.2 | 4 |
| 1995 | Steve Bono, K.C. | 26 | 27 | 1.0 | 0 |
| 1996 | Scott Mitchell, Det. | 37 | 83 | 2.2 | 1 |
| 2002 | Jon Kitna, Cin. | 38 | 113 | 3.0 | 0 |
| 2003 | Marc Bulger, St.L. | 19 | 89 | 4.7 | 3 |
| 2006 | Peyton Manning, Ind. | 20 | -5 | -.3 | 3 |
| 2007 | Cleo Lemon, Mia. | 2 | -3 | -1.5 | 0 |
| 2011 | Mark Sanchez, NYJ | 22 | 28 | 1.3 | 0 |
| 2012 | Tom Brady, N.E. | 32 | 18 | .6 | 0 |
—Ian Allan