For his first four seasons in Minnesota, Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins wasn’t necessarily surrounded by a coaching staff constructed to get the best performance from the most important player on the field. For season five, Cousins has a head coach who knows how to coach NFL quarterbacks, in part because he was one.
The new regime, led by G.M. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O’Connell, decided to keep Cousins. In a Wednesday session with #PFTPM, Adofo-Mensah explained why they decided to stay the course at quarterback.
“Kirk’s a really good quarterback,” Adofo-Mensah said. “Things are binary. Either you’re a champion or you’re not. Either you’re the GOAT or you’re not. I don’t think that’s really how you successfully build teams. When you study historically what wins the NFL, special quarterback play does matter, but there are other ways to win.
“What we try to do is first and foremost get Kirk in the fold. I had a presentation with him. ‘Hey, you’re our partner in this. We’re trying to build this thing to have you be the best version of yourself, Kevin and I.’ Once we do that, then we can maybe go back and reassess where we are, but we think the best version of him and surrounding him with other things give us a really good chance.
“Ultimately, I can’t sit here and tell you I know for certain what that’s gonna be, but we think that it gives us a great chance to be there at the end with a chance to do it. Obviously extending him gives us more time, right? A lot of that is just these things don’t take off in one day, in one month. These are that take a little — they’ve had exposure together before. I think the last time Kevin coached him [in Washington] I think it was all under the same situation where it was a one-year deal and Kevin was like, ‘Look, I want to pour into this guy. I think he’s one of the best quarterback guys I’ve ever been around, so I want to pour into this guy, see what the best he can be and we’ll see what happens in the end.’ We thought that was the best path going forward.”
Plenty of Vikings fans wanted to move away from Cousins. But who would they have replaced him with? How would they have done better? Who would they have gotten?
They were better off sticking with Cousins, at least for a year or two. Where it goes from there remains to be seen.