Kirk Cousins and the Legends of the Arbitrary Benchmarks

Did you know that Kirk Cousins joined Peyton Manning and Dan Marino last week as the only quarterbacks in history to throw for over 30,000 yards and 200 touchdowns in their first 115 NFL games?

The folks from the Vikings public relations department tweeted that pearl of a factoid last week. It's a remarkable accomplishment. Not by Cousins, mind you, but by the PR department, whose work belongs in the Arbitrary Benchmarks Hall of Fame.

You are a stat-savvy audience, so I won't over-explain the concept of arbitrary benchmarks. There's nothing all that special about the 30,000-yard or 200-touchdown plateaus; they just happen to be nice round milestones that Cousins recently reached. And those…