I’m convinced Kirk Cousins is a robot. There, I said it. It really feels good to get that off my chest. How do I know this, you ask? There’s just too much evidence to believe otherwise.
These primary factors benefit Cousins’ ability to quarterback a team. Minnesota Vikings fans have seen it year after year. He’s always healthy. Who needs a vaccine when all your blood is oil, and your lungs are made of gears and springs? Cousins ain’t missing time. Mike Zimmer wasn’t privy to the information I have if he was mad about that.
According to DraftSharks.com, Cousins has a 5% chance of injury this year. His only reported football injury was an ankle sprain in 2009. Repairing his ankle had to be easy enough to fix, just some retooling of his joint – or his mechanical manipulator, if you ask me. It’s really helped his availability being more machine than man.
Due to his availability, Cousins has had plenty of games to showcase his talent. He’s so consistent it’s kind of incredible. His average season based on past-seasons-started would look like this: 4,224 yards, 29 touchdowns, 10 interceptions, with 67.8% accuracy. Look familiar? That’s because every season of his is nearly identical to this.
Luckily for the Vikings, he seems to have had a software update to remove a few interceptions per year around 2018. He’s only thrown more than 10 once since coming to Minnesota, with his average getting weighed down from his time in Washington. That leads me to the next benefit he gets from having artificial intelligence.
The Cousins bot is reprogrammable. He has the software to learn and adapt playbooks quickly. He even got cheeky when asked about learning the new playbooks in the offseason. Cousins joked that he felt “like an eighth-grader studying for a quiz.” His AI knowledge certainly benefits him because players are often cut for their inability to learn new plays and execute them.
Kevin O’Connell knows this about AI Kirk, and he loves it. He introduced his offense using the term “illusion of complexity,” and Cousins was built for that kind of scheme. O’Connell added that the offense is (relatively) simple, but it doesn’t look that way to defenses.
Lucky for O’Connell, Cousins is the perfect quarterback for him. He can run all the plays. And while he sometimes breaks down in situations he wasn’t programmed for, he’s incredibly efficient with the proper tools around him. I have no concerns that Cousins can execute the new playbook because he was designed to do so in his Washington days when Sean McVay was his offensive coordinator, and O’Connell was his quarterback coach. Now O’Connell has recognizable plays from his time there.
But AI isn’t perfect because the technology just isn’t there yet. Notably, he still seems a little too artificial. People have been critical of Cousins’ ability to lead a team at times, including former players. It’s impossible to build a perfect android, but maybe the technology will finally be there. It’s 2022, and AI is all the rage.
I have hopes for the software updates this season. Recently, O’Connell told the media that he was “sick” and left practice on Thursday for a “quarantine.” A little late for regular maintenance heading into the preseason, but the front office won’t fool me. I know an OS update when I see one. (And that Week 17 absence last season against the Green Bay Packers? It may have been a virus alright, but the kind you get from opening the wrong e-mail attachment. Who among us hasn’t fallen for that one a time or two?)
Perhaps this update was just the one he needed to help him inspire the locker room. If anyone has the most up-to-date technology for an android, it’s Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell. As one of the league’s youngest and most analytical front offices, it’s only natural that they’d choose to have a unit like Cousins 1.0 to lead their team.
What’s the giveaway? His smile. Cousins is a sharp-looking guy, but there’s just something about it that seems awfully familiar.
So, what kind of robot is Cousins? Well, as much as I’d like him to be, I don’t think he’s a Terminator. He’s not even a hybrid human/robot like Robocop. He’s certainly not a Chappie or a Johnny 5 — that’s too much personality. Cousins is more like an android from Stephen Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
He’s built to fit in. He doesn’t stand out among other NFL quarterbacks. Sure, he’s an elite athlete and one of the top 32 QBs in the world. But, due to technological limitations and his intent to keep the humans in the dark, he’s perfectly average at what he does.
Proven by his 59-59-2 record as a starting quarterback, he won’t invite the NFL’s attention. The league will look into Tom Brady playing at age 45, Pat Mahomes’ ridiculous arm strength, or Lamar Jackson‘s speed before they suspect Cousins is a robot in human form. It’s the perfect grift.
Well, the jig’s up because I found the truth. No fake news here. The reality about Cousins is painfully obvious because this situation is as campy as Small Wonder. (Thank you to my semi-elderly editors, who introduced me to this ’80s TV sitcom.) Cousins is exactly the kind of goofy dad that would be a robot assimilated into a human family.
