Vikings

It’s Time To Go Full Heel Manager Mode On the Minnesota Vikings

Photo Credit: Matthew Emmons (USA TODAY Sports)

There are several signs that football season is around the corner. The first is headlines that include “Best Shape of His Life” or “Got That Dawg In ‘Em.” Then, it’s the start of training camp. Preseason kicks in, and Week 1 is here faster than Garrett Bradbury winds up on the turf during a practice drill.

But there is another sign that isn’t on the football field. Over at Defector, Drew Magary puts together a series known as “Why Your Team Sucks.” While Magary hits all 32 teams, he does not hold back on the Minnesota Vikings.

Why should he hold back? While Mark and Zygi Wilf were in Orlando trying to get their soccer team off the ground, the Vikings were creating the type of mess that your kids would make when left alone in the basement with a box of permanent markers and a two-liter of Mountain Dew.

Coincidentally, the Wilfs returned from Minnesota and asked, “Who did this?” They got the same response as your combative offspring.

“It was him!”

“Him” was Mike Zimmer, whose time had run out after eight seasons with the Vikings. After they replaced him with Kevin O’Connell, the Vikings proceeded to bring back the same roster that has missed the playoffs over the past two seasons.

Because of this, Magary, a Vikings fan, threatened to “douse myself in gasoline and ride your stovetop like a mechanical bull.”

Of course, nothing Magary said was wrong. The Vikings have taught their fans to prepare for the worst.

You get the idea.

But if we continue to wallow in the history of the Vikings’ failures, we become miserable creatures that lock ourselves in our homes for 50 weeks out of the year to enjoy two weeks of warm, mosquito-free weather. Life is too short to fear the worst.

That’s why it’s time to go heel manager mode.

The heel manager is a staple in the art of professional wrestling. A proficient wrestler is good enough to get the crowd to turn against him. But a smooth-talker dropping the truth beside him makes the crowd want to see him die a slow, painful death.

Entering this season, most Vikings fans are ready to point out the heel’s flaws at every turn. But for a select few, they stay on board, enjoying a different level of satisfaction when the heel proves everybody wrong.

Take Kirk Cousins, for example. On the surface, Cousins has a tendency to choke in the biggest games. He has a smile that could run for a gerrymandered political office. He should be just as much to blame for Minnesota’s failures in 2021. Instead, the Vikings extended him, brought in a head coach that likes him, and gave him a cast of weapons that should be a top-five offense.

If that wasn’t enough, maybe his unvaccinated status is enough to drive people over the edge. After missing a do-or-die matchup with the Green Bay Packers last January with a case of COVID-19, Cousins tested positive again last week. But, like a true heel, Cousins acted like it was the plan all along.

“I was commenting to my wife that if I had to miss five days and you were to be strategic about which five, I probably picked a pretty good five,” Cousins said. “The Thursday practice would’ve been great to be a part of, but Friday was lighter, Saturday was a travel day, Sunday would’ve been at most only a half-dozen plays. Then Monday was an off day, so it worked out pretty well from that standpoint.”

This is brilliant. Cousins probably checked the practice schedule, drove up to St. Cloud, took a whiff of “fresh” air, and got this burden out of the way.

Long story short, Cousins is playing chess while the rest of the NFL is playing checkers.

That’s not even counting Cousins’ prowess on the field. Since coming to Minnesota in 2018, Cousins has thrown for at least 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns with fewer than 13 interceptions in three seasons. Russell Wilson and Patrick Mahomes are the only quarterbacks to accomplish this feat.

But there’s more. Just like when Ric Flair teamed up with Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, Cousins could be just as unstoppable aligned with O’Connell.

O’Connell has vowed to clear Cousins’ mind, and they’re off to a great start so far. Cousins has been on fire during training camp and capped it off with an F-bomb during Wednesday’s joint practice with the San Francisco 49ers.

That’s right. O’Connell has Cousins playing so loose, he’s out here dropping F-bombs on the field — and we don’t mean “frickin’.”

But the choice to tab O’Connell makes so much sense. Before Cousins was the NFL’s premier stat-padding quarterback, there was Matthew Stafford. After years of being buried in Detroit, Stafford rose like a phoenix and produced a game-winning drive in the Super Bowl with O’Connell riding shotgun.

You may be thinking, Well, that was with Sean McVay, but that’s exactly why this relationship will work.

McVay’s coaching tree produced both head coaches in last season’s Super Bowl (counting, you know, McVay). It also produced the coach that has built an empire in Green Bay. If it weren’t for Rodgers’ postseason performance, this tree could have multiple Super Bowl rings by now, and O’Connell was drinking straight from the Kool-Aid jug.

This sounds insane, but take a look around the NFC. Tom Brady is AWOL from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers camp. Stafford’s elbow is ready to explode, and Rodgers is one bad cup of psychedelic tea from believing he’s being chased by actual Vikings.

If you embrace the positives, this season could be a lot more fun than the one you had last year. Hell, you too could be celebrating vigorously while Cousins and O’Connell are raising the Lombardi Trophy as smoothly as Scott Hall played off getting aced by a $20 cup of beer.

It’s simply more fun to be the bad guy, and if the Vikings win, they’ll suddenly be the coolest team in the room.

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