CAPTAIN KIRK
Cousins, Vikings entertaining Super dreams
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VERY little boy playing quarterback for his first pee-wee football team dreams of a day when his favorite NFL team, or maybe any NFL team, believes in him enough to guarantee him $84 million to lead it to a Super Bowl championship. For most of them, of course, it will amount to nothing more than a pipe dream.
“I’m living a dream, certainly,” Kirk Cousins said by phone, “but I have been told many times the percent probability of being a professional athlete, it wasn’t high. I’m a logical person and I thought, ‘Well, if the math says it’s one-in-whatever, then I’m probably not gonna have an opportunity to be able to do it.’
“So I never planned on being here, but you just take the next step in the journey, which was everything from being a varsity quarterback in high school to … getting a college scholarship to just trying to get on the field in college and be able to contribute, then try to play at a high level to where you might be draftable and then keep taking those steps, next step, next step, next step, and next thing you know, here you are.”
Here he is, suddenly changing a narrative that he was the wrong man to overcome t he Super-Bowl-orbust mandate he inherited when t he desperate Vikings showed him the money to get them over the mountainous hump before the 2018 season.
The pressure can be suffocating, especially in a division with Aaron Rodgers, especially when the Vikings are 0-4 in the Super Bowl and haven’t returned since Super Bowl XI — on Jan. 9, 1977. Especially when you were paid to be the last piece to coach Mike Zimmer’s Super Bowl puzzle in your three-year window.
Except Captain Kirk knows how to stop the doomsday machine with the Seahawks lurking on Monday night.
“Well, you kind of get tunnel vision, and it’s not what really crosses your mind,” Cousins told Serby Says. “You end up focusing on yo u r preparation each week, whi c h is, ‘Hey, I gotta study the thirddown defense of t he Seattle Seahawks,’ and that’s where my focus is. When you’re that focused on individual things like the thirddown defense of the Seahawks, you just don’t really have a lot of time to focus on outside expectations or noise. It helps to be insulated and just go do your job and focus on what the coaches are telling you to do and not allowing anything else to get into your mind.”
Cousins rejected the Jets’ $30 million-a-year offer for a better championship chance with a better team.
“I’ve never lived in New York, never really understood what that would be like,” Cousins said. “But I would try to not read things or listen to sports talk as I’m driving to and from work, and just focus on what my coaches are telling me.”
His approach is now working like a charm (21 touchdowns, three interceptions, 70.6 completion percentage), and he rallied the Twin Cities behind him when he showed up as Comeback Kirk for the Vikings’ most- recent game, throwing for 267 yards and three TDs in the second half to erase a 20-point deficit for a 27-23 victory over the Broncos on Nov. 17. You like that?!?!
“I don’t know what the metric is, but I’m certainly not going into games without confidence,” Cousins said. “But you understand every game is its own entity and you gotta go out there and
play at a high level each week, and whatever you did the past week, nobody really cares about it. It doesn’t roll over into the next game — you have to bring it each game for what it is. And then when that game ends, you put that away and you go forward — win, loss, draw, whatever it may be. You gotta get geared up for the next one.”
Over his past five games, Cousins has thrown 14 TD passes without an interception. But when you ask him if he considers himself in a zone, he says: “I don’t. If you win a few games, people start to look at it as one entity and think that they’re all tied together, but the reality is that every week you show up and it’s 0-0 and it’s a new team and a new day and there’s no carryover from the previous week.”
No one adjusts better than Cousins, who masterfully defused criticism from receiver Adam Thielen following an early-season loss to the Bears when he apologized for failing to give him enough opportunities, and he argues against anyy personal resurgence.
“I don’t think the start was that slow. I mean, we were 2-2. If you go back and look at it after those four games, I wasn’t playing all that badly. It was just a narrative that had gotten out of control,” Cousins said. “You just stay the course, play the way you’ve always played and eventually it’ll start to even itself out.”
Cousins (30 TDs, 10 INTs, 4,298 yards) could not carry the Vikings into the playoffs last season, but he has flourished this season under new offensive coordinator/playcaller Kevin Stefanski and company. Cousins spreads the kudos around to an offensive staff that also includes Gary Kubiak, Klint Kubiak and Rick Dennison.
“It’s been a really good dynamic working with all of them, and I think they’ve all brought something to the table that has made a difference for us,” Cousins said.
The emergence of running back Dalvin Cook has made a huge difference.
“I don’t need to say much — his tape speaks for itself what he’s done running the football and also catching the ball in the screen game. He’s made us one of the better teams in the NFL when it comes to running screens,” Cousins said.
Cousins, not to mention receiver Stefon Diggs, will benefit from the return of Thielen from his Week 7 hamstring pull.
“Both special receivers,” Cousins said. “Haven’t had Adam for the last several weeks, so it’s put a little more weight on Stefon Diggs’ shoulders, and he’s done a great job handling that.”
Tight end Kyle Rudolph has stepped up with four TDs in the past three games.
“Kyle’s made some unbelievable catches for us, thinking back to the Cowboys game on Sundayday nightnight, what he was able to do for us in the red zone,” Cousins said.
Cousins isn’t paying any mind to his 0-7 record on “Monday Night Football” or his 7-28 mark against teams with winning records, at a time when his Vikings are 8-3 and tied with the Packers atop the NFC North.
Every little boy playing quarterback for his f irst pee-wee football team dreams of leading his NFL team to a Super Bowl championship. Every NFL team dreams of the quarterback who can take it there. Cousins has 84 million reasons to bring that Lombardi Trophy to Minnesota. Asked what he hopes Vikings fans say about him, he said:
“That he’s a winner. At the end of the day, that’s what Vikings fans care about. If we play well on offense but don’t win, Vikings fans don’t really care.”