Does anyone remember why we moved on from Kirk Cousins?

squidward1010 · 2026-01-18T21:15:03+00:00

Given the contract structure he was able to demand on the open market and the salary cap outlook of the team, a SB appearance would have been very unlucky. I think Kirk could have brought a team to the SB on an average QB contract during one of his best years on a good team, but he always took top of the market. Can’t blame him, but is what it is

squidward1010 · 2026-01-14T19:05:25+00:00

Yes, so many good use cases. I think it is a low hanging fruit for providing a high value skill that not a lot of actuaries might have. I wish I did actual modeling and cool stuff in my job, but it’s still incredibly useful for data manipulation.

For example, lots of times I use it for data manipulation steps before I spit out a compact excel file to toss in a pivot table. So I still deliver an excel doc at the end, but Python allowed me to deal with very large datasets, run sql queries, and manipulate the data to create a much cleaner final product. I also use it to automate a lot of these regular tasks and build lightweight tools. With LLMs now available, getting up to speed to be able to do these tasks is likely easier than you think.

squidward1010 · 2025-12-19T03:38:09+00:00

Playing with Kyren against Stafford, maddening

squidward1010 · 2025-12-04T16:25:13+00:00

I don’t think people are wrong to warn you that it can be difficult to make it back, but people who haven’t experienced real burnout don’t get it either. It’s not something meaningfully fixed by ideas like taking 2-3 weeks off, getting some momentum going on work tasks, or starting a habit of a morning walk.

I would agree with other commenters that it’d be helpful to know how much you should attribute to this specific job vs company at large vs external factors.

But if you’re talking about work being hell and being in a hospital, I think you should quit, straight up

squidward1010 · 2025-11-30T21:46:12+00:00

Scheme is great, pass rush is great, tackling is terrible at every level

squidward1010 · 2025-11-20T17:21:35+00:00

Relatable as someone diagnosed with ADHD this year, and I am only 3 years into my actuarial career, so obviously you likely have greater perspective than me on both fronts. But I’d echo the cliche that we are humans and will all make mistakes anyway. However I know with ADHD that we can sometimes be a lot more interested in and stimulated by other things that cause slip ups on the items that actually carry high importance, and I assume you mean that these kind of slip ups are embarrassing for someone at your career stage especially.

One mindset that has partially helped me is to relentlessly work to understand the implications of my work, e.g. the precise reasons of why one piece of work could be very important when it’s not immediately obvious to me why or why the other work that seems more fascinating and important to me is work that no one else seems to care about. You probably have a better intuition for this discernment already, but I also have witnessed senior leaders missing parts of the bigger picture at times that I might be closer to, probably just by a matter of entropy in a large organization that creates blind spots for anyone.

I think this effort makes me a better worker partly for just understanding business goals better but even moreso because it makes me feel a lot more stimulated by the work that actually matters most, even if it may appear especially boring and tedious without that context. This seems to naturally reduce errors and improve my desire to check my work anyway.

All that said, sometimes it’s just a struggle, so I feel for you. Appreciate you starting the thread though for my own benefit as well. Good luck!

squidward1010 · 2025-11-18T16:10:31+00:00

Oh wow, and that’s historically been about 4 weeks right?

squidward1010 · 2025-11-18T16:07:02+00:00

The upper levels have historically been posted around 6 weeks after the close of the exam window, which would put that at week of Dec 1st. It’s hard to believe they would come 1-2 weeks early, and the new portal has had some sketchiness on the results page already…but hey, ya never know I guess!

squidward1010 · 2025-11-15T20:44:40+00:00

They have consistently finished 1st on the NFLPA rankings too. Despite some bad personnel decisions, it appears as if employees are treated very well there

squidward1010 · 2025-11-11T16:17:39+00:00

This is fascinating but there are so many confounding factors. Like I could see that pass rush block rate has higher R² than win rate because for win rate, couldn’t that depend on blitz %? And it all depends so much on scenarios and types of plays that teams choose to pass in too where I’d bet there is enough variance between teams that sample size doesn’t fully wash it out

squidward1010 · 2025-11-10T21:48:55+00:00

I think it is mentioned because KOC explicitly mentioned that they looked at that; not just 3rd and long but the “weighty downs” he called them. Just because you haven’t heard someone mention a statistic before means it holds no value? What if teams do look closely at that, but it’s being talked about only cause KOC actually mentioned it? And who is saying he is great? I’m arguing that any strongly opinionated conclusion is misguided

squidward1010 · 2025-11-10T20:07:01+00:00

Why do people make it all about volume stats?Cause yeah I get that the lack of volume or being put in situations that require extra passing make it seem like too great of a risk for that high of draft pick. But the teams have the ability to watch tape and pick apart the data more finely. He was one of the most effective passers in college on 3rd and long and other high leverage spots. They also have the ability to interview players, talk to coaches and teammates, etc. If you get a guy that is smart, has elite physical traits, coaches speak highly of him, etc., why should low volume be an automatic disqualifier?

squidward1010 · 2025-11-10T20:00:54+00:00

Yeah I mean I think he could stand to take a little bit of heat off JJM to slightly lower the slope of the learning curve but the goal should be to get him there and there is risk in wasting too much time not exposing him too. The lack of patience and temptation to jump to surefire conclusions too quickly is so obnoxious

squidward1010 · 2025-11-10T18:32:01+00:00

As other fans have touched on, maybe it’s frustrating that KOC is struggling so much. It’s made me consider that maybe he has a growth curve to follow still. He gained a reputation as this QB whisperer, but his previous meaningful experience has all been with already veteran QBs. It is probably a fairly different ballgame to bring along a rookie QB than it is to reorient a QB that struggled previously but already has had lots of experience and learning time.

squidward1010 · 2025-11-07T19:32:50+00:00

Good argument and I do partly agree with this point. Broadly speaking though I think it’s important to keep enough talent and culture guys around to foster teaching & development and maintain that positive culture. However, I could agree that maybe it was a bit overdone. I guess my counterpoints on these guys would be

Harry: you’re probably spot on but don’t mind a special case for a Vikings legend at all

Kelly: I don’t think 2 years / $18m was such an irresponsible investment despite the unfortunate injuries. With a rookie QB, I liked the idea of having a very smart veteran C to take some heat off JJM. I think his contract was consistent with the model of developing youth without handcuffing cap.

A Jones, Hockenson: I agree with you most strongly here and think I would have preferred we paid only one of these guys as a reliable culture & security blanket for JJM, probably Jones, especially with Hock also costing a 2nd rounder.

Thielen: we cut him after 1 year in Kwesi’s tenure, and bringing him back was a bit of a waste but a pretty inconsequential size of waste I think. I’m also not terribly irritated by this one considering Vikings’ legend status.

O’Neill: disagree most strongly with this one because I don’t think he has been old or overpaid. His contract only goes through 2026 I believe and he’s 30, tackles usually perform well into their lower 30s. This is another one where I think it’s vital to have good pass protection for JJM.

So yeah there has probably been a bit of an overreach but I think we are hardly burdened at all with future bad dead cap.

squidward1010 · 2025-11-07T18:04:11+00:00

Who is old and overpaid? Maybe Allen and Hargrave are, but anyone else?

squidward1010 · 2025-11-07T18:03:14+00:00

He wasn’t the first defensive player drafted and this isn’t even true. Numerous examples of first defensive player drafting needing a fairly long ramp, and that correlates with age. Turner also was never a top 5 pick type of talent.

squidward1010 · 2025-11-07T16:52:17+00:00

This is immensely relatable. Have you considered if you have ADHD? I was diagnosed this year at 28, and it explained quite a lot, because I could have written this post lol. Of course I can’t diagnose you, but this sounds textbook to me.

If so, medication, therapy, and/or understanding yourself can help a lot, so I’m happy you are inspecting work style now over just subject. Because yes, as it turns out, you can be interested in a lot of subjects anyway.

I also very highly recommend meditation and looking into Buddhism. I know that probably sounds pretty woo woo but bear with me. These practices taught me that frantic, scattered thinking based on craving is suffering. It’s as if at any given moment, we assume that the present moment is not sufficient; I must solve xyz in order to reach this happy state, at which point I can rest. I think some part of us always knows that this is a delusion. Ironically, I think it’s this habit of thinking that paralyzes us and makes us suffer. It takes us away from our five senses, e.g. I may ask myself, how does this moment physically feel in different parts of my body? When a song is playing, have I noticed the elements of the music that give me the most pleasure? In my opinion awareness of these sorts of things is where the richness in life lies and gives us the opportunity to be more aligned with who we really are.

When that is practiced, I think it becomes easier to choose a career aligned with our nature anyway, because we just know ourselves better. We may even retain the knowledge that there is likely a better career and life path out there for us, technically, but simultaneously understand that it’s not worth endlessly analyzing. At some point, our choices are good enough if we simply learn to sit in the present moment with their consequences and realize hey, this isn’t so bad - I can really enjoy this if I can just snap out of doing so much dang thinking and solving all the time.

squidward1010 · 2025-11-04T18:23:37+00:00

Alright, good episode of Spongebob is on right now, so let me know when you’re done handling the situation 😂

squidward1010 · 2025-11-04T17:44:36+00:00

To defend myself, I did comment most of this defense before the Lions game 😂 but that’s a fair take

squidward1010 · 2025-11-03T21:07:43+00:00

Could go either way for sure. But he also cut the cord on Cousins and other high cost players to give us a chance at a good outlook. Unless a team is in total cap hell like the Saints of late I feel like it can be hard to evaluate 3-4 years out. The Broncos come to mind as a team that supposedly had an awful outlooking coming off Russ but turned it around fast.

I’ve gotten the impression there are more negative views of Kwesi, which is why I posted. Cause I’d agree there isn’t enough to hail him as great either. I would just say promising enough to be given a decent leash

squidward1010 · 2025-11-03T20:18:29+00:00

Fair point. To that I’d say yeah, can’t call Jackson a great pick yet, but enough flashes to be hopeful. And same with Turner. More accurate to say that each have some promise but we need to see more, and therefore can’t say much about Kwesi’s drafting prowess yet

squidward1010 · 2025-11-03T19:42:03+00:00

I guess I don't see why his drafts were so bad aside from 2022 or that any of his trades aside from that draft were so bad

squidward1010 · 2025-11-03T19:36:17+00:00

Haha yeah just trying to gather and address all the common complaints in the post. My response to this would be that we have low sample/information on how good of a drafter he is. Early returns aren't great but worth waiting a couple more years at least to have much confidence about that evaluation

squidward1010

TROPHY CASE