Cousins' Leadership

A new weekly tradition

Mike Zimmer isn’t professing to be the catalyst behind Cousins’ early-season surge, but he’s glad the two are spending more time in the film room together.

At Cousins’ request, the two started watching film and talking Xs and Os weekly this season, a habit that had fallen away in recent seasons. Zimmer says it gives them a chance to connect about defenses Cousins will face and things Zimmer has seen in the past.

“I think it’s helped both ways,” Zimmer said. “I think the communication between both of us is much better. I can understand some of the things he’s thinking about during the game. I can kind of try to give him some tips on what defensive backs or alignments or front-wise, what teams are trying to do. I mean, he asks a lot of questions about defenses and defense in general. And I try to talk a lot about even past history things, you know? What happened when I was in Dallas or Cincinnati or whatever. He asks a lot of those things. We talk a lot about different things, things that may upset him, things that may upset me. I think it’s been really good.”

The relationship between Zimmer and Cousins appeared strained in training camp over Cousins’ decision not to get vaccinated. It appears as if their weekly meeting is helping patch things up, which seems like an important development for the sustainability of that relationship.

“I think it's helpful to have a structured time every week to meet with the head coach as the quarterback,” Cousins said. “With the role I have I think it's great to just have an understood time every week to meet. I forget which week it was, but coming out of Monday or Tuesday I had a thought for him, but I knew, hey, Thursday I have my time for him, we'll talk about it then. So I just think it helps to have that planned time every week to go over third downs, go over our offensive plan at a high level, go over our team dynamics, whatever it might be.”

Before the Commanders game on Nov. 6, a reporter asked Cousins about his unceremonious exit from Washington. Cousins did his best to avoid controversy with his answer. “It’s probably a combination of reasons,” he said. “Any time you go .500, it’s a league that you wanna win; you gotta win. It’s what have you done lately, and you’re only as good as your last play.

“So I think by going .500, it’s hard to have that staying power in any place.”

A couple of minutes later, another reporter asked him about going to DC with 6-1 and if that reflected his improved play. “I don’t think it is,” he said. “I’ve had a lot better seven-game starts to a season than this. I think I’m getting more comfortable in this system.

“I’ve been kind of chuckling to myself driving home. We can play so much better, we have played so much better, and there were games we would lose. I’d drive home, and I’d say, ‘I don’t know if I can play a lot better. That’s about as good as I can do.’ Then these games this year a lot of times … thanks to the defense, thanks to the special teams, thanks to the turnovers, thanks to our run game, thanks to whatever, we’re winning. But, man, I can play a lot better.”

Cousins doubled down on those comments after Minnesota’s 33-26 win over the New England Patriots. Not only had Kevin O’Connell defeated Bill Belichick, the coach who drafted and unceremoniously cut him, but the Vikings had bounced back four days after the Dallas Cowboys had shellacked them, 40-3. As he had done in the 33-30 overtime win in Buffalo, Cousins started slow and finished magnificently. He’s continued to make plays when it matters most.

“It’s funny because we’re winning, so I feel like talking to you guys has been a lot easier this year, but I’m not playing any better,” Cousins reiterated after the Patriots win. “If anything, I’m coming to these press conferences trying to smile, having to work to smile, because I’m thinking to myself, ‘Man, I’ve got to play better.’”

“There’s a lot of things that I’m not really involved in that are helping us win,” he continued, referencing kickoff returns, pass rush, and field position. “I believe, I’m optimistic, that the longer I’m in this system, we’re in this system, it’s only going to get cleaner, it’s only going to get better. As I said in August, we don’t have time. Thankfully we’ve been finding a way to win in spite of it being Year 1 in this system.”

There is one way that Cousins’ self-critical approach is positive and two that it could be negative. The positive is that he feels he and the offense can reach another level. But one potentially negative aspect is if he lets perfect become the enemy of good. Should Cousins have thrown a ball directly at cornerback Dane Jackson in the Buffalo Bills game? No. But he also led them to an overtime win. A lot of games have gone like that this year.

Finally, he can’t use his individual numbers to exclusively determine how he’s playing.

Cousins had four 300-plus yard games through 11 weeks last year; he only has one (vs. Buffalo) this year. At this point in the season last year, Cousins had seven games with a quarterback rating over 100; this year, he only has four. But nobody would claim that he played better last year when he led the Vikings to their third near-.500 record since arriving in 2018. Fortunately, Cousins doesn’t seem to be making that claim. Instead, some of it appears to be an innate feeling he has in O’Connell’s system. To some extent, it’s also individual mistakes he identifies in each game.

“If you look at the pass to K.J. [Osborn] in the flat that I left a little short, threw too quickly,” Cousins said, referring to a pass in the Patriots game where Osborn bailed him out by ripping a potential interception out of the cornerback’s hands. “I tried to put touch on it. I just need to stick my back foot in the ground and rifle that thing to him. Way too close for comfort. The third down with Justin in the first quarter, it all runs together. The one I left inside could have been intercepted. This is the way I am, man. I’m kind of hard on myself. I go back there and think of all the plays I need to be better.”

O’Connell has shown Cousins support ever since he took the Vikings job. He’s allowed him to fail and recover. Cousins says he feels the support, which is likely why he’s playing better. He bounced back from throwing two early picks in Buffalo and one against the Patriots. O’Connell said Cousins’ interception against New England was his fault, that he was doing too much on third-and-long. Therefore, it’s funny that Cousins feels he’s underperformed in a season where he has a supportive coach and is driving winning for a team that was .500 the past two years.

“I don’t know,” he said when a reporter asked if he’d ever be satisfied with his performance. “I probably drive myself crazy, my family crazy being this way. It’s just the way I’m wired. I’m an improver. I’m kind of obsessed with improvement. Even when things are good, my mind goes to how can they be better? You kind of torture yourself that way.”

Cousins’ drive to be better has served him well. He went from a player Washington drafted to be Robert Griffin III’s backup to a $150 million starting quarterback. But perfect can be the enemy of the good, and stats don’t quantify everything. Cousins didn’t become “Kirko Chains” by throwing 300-yard games. He transformed into a social media sensation after his teammates threw their chains on him after a win over his former team. Everyone can embrace a winning player. A seven-year-old fan doesn’t care about Cousins’ quarterback rating; he wants to see his favorite team win.

In the intense quiet of the Vikings locker room before their Thanksgiving headliner against New England, the weight of the moment hung around the players’ shoulders. Just four days earlier, they were humiliated in a late-afternoon showdown against the Dallas Cowboys. Now here they were again, in another prime-time slot, with the eyes of the nation wide open and transfixed after a turkey-induced nap.

Adam Thielen understood the stakes. He knew that so much of the Vikings’ work to prove they belonged in the conversation of NFC contenders was compromised by the 40-3 wipeout against Dallas. He knew the Cowboys had given mastermind Bill Belichick a road map to beating Minnesota. When he crossed paths with Kirk Cousins, Thielen stopped his quarterback dead in his tracks to deliver a message.

“You’re a dang good football player, and you prove it week in and week out,” Thielen told him. “You show how tough you are, how prepared you are. Just go out there and let it fly.”

In a season of come-from-behind wins and social media memes, of daring throws into double coverage and gutsy scrambles for first downs, conversations like that one with Thielen have buoyed Cousins to play some of the most resilient and clutch football of his career, including in a thrilling 33-26 victory over the Patriots on Thursday night.

Cousins has faced doubts about his ability to lead a winner since the moment he arrived in Minnesota in 2018, and not just from fans or league-wide observers. He could feel the disbelief in Mike Zimmer’s no-bluff demeanor. He could see it in Stefon Diggs’ eyes when the receiver was orchestrating his way out of town. And he may have even heard it in Thielen’s voice during that infamous sideline shouting match at the end of a disappointing first season in purple.

After engineering yet another fourth-quarter, come-from-behind victory that propelled the Vikings to 9-2 and put the team’s troubling performance against Dallas in the rearview, Cousins cut the image of a player who has inspired complete faith in his coaches and his teammates. While deflecting opportunities to bask in the glow of an impressive individual performance, a reflective Cousins was overcome by describing the support he feels he has inside the Vikings locker room.

“At times it almost brings me to tears the way these guys support me and have my back,” Cousins said after completing 30 of 37 passes for 299 yards with three touchdowns and one interception. “It really adds to the fun of playing and working together.”

For the first time since the Vikings shocked the NFL world by giving Cousins a fully guaranteed contract following a good but unspectacular run in Washington, the quarterback is truly leading this team. His completion percentage isn’t quite as high as it has been in the past. His touchdown-to-interception ratio isn’t close to as precise. But Cousins has been more dangerous this season than ever before because of the chances he is willing to take, an element of daring that has been instilled by the belief he can feel all around him.