Vikings Fans Mostly Unfazed by Last Week’s Vaccine Hoopla

  |  
Aug 9, 2021
Kirk Cousins
Image Courtesy of @wcco on Twitter.

To the tune of three-fourths of all Minnesota Vikings fans, the majority of folks do not believe that last week’s vaccine fracas was that detrimental to the scope of the 2021 season.

Vikings enthusiasts were unscientifically polled by VikingsTerritory over the weekend, and these are the results:

1,208 people responded to the Twitter poll.

In fairness, the most significant block of respondents (33.4%) are concerned a little bit about the unvaccinated players missing time in 2021. But that one-third chunk is surrounded by not concerned at all answers and people who believe that the issue will simply fade away.

About one quarter (26.4%) of Vikings fans are gravely concerned about the potential fallout.

A week and a half ago, three Vikings quarterbacks – Kirk Cousins, Kellen Mond, and Nate Stanley – missed the team’s organized, paid-event night practice at TCO Performance Center in Eagan, kickstarting the ruckus on who is and isn’t vaccinated. Mond was believed to contract the virus while Cousins and Stanley, through implication, were determined to be unvaccinated. Mond has not yet returned to the Vikings as he recovers from COVID, but Cousins and Mond rejoined last Thursday.

Upon returning, Cousins was featured in a press conference where he expressed his desire to enhance distancing protocols and his own commitment to avoiding the virus – all while not getting the vaccine. He even mentioned plexiglass as a tool to minimizes risk or holding team meetings outdoors during Minnesota’s cold winter months.

Cousins isn’t the only unvaccinated Vikings player – Minnesota was revealed as the NFL’s least vaccinated team around the time Cousins was answering questions about his vaccine status.

 

Vikings co-owner Mark Wilf announced a worriment about his team’s vaccination status in an interview last week. It is unclear if the Vikings leadership will inspire more players to get vaccinated. Not long ago, the Washington Football team owned the NFL’s least vaccinated title. But soon after, Washington saw an uptick in its overall vaccinated percentage. Perhaps the Vikings will follow suit – or the players might just be totally dug in.

In any event, most Vikings fans do not expect the vaccine stuff to derail 2021 aspirations. Under Mike Zimmer, the Vikings alternate good seasons (2015, 2017, 2019) with mediocre ones (2014, 2016, 2018, 2020), so this year on the weird rotation is cause for excitement. General Manager Rick Spielman added oodles of new talent in free agency – mostly defenders – seeking to rectify last year’s rancid defensive performance. The Vikings allowed the fourth-most points in the league during the pandemic season.

Because Cousins is the most visible unvaccinated player – other Vikings have not received the vaccine, but nobody cares – he’s the poster boy for criticism. Indeed, it would be simple for Cousins to get it over with and accept the vaccine, but he has routinely called the issue a private matter, implying he has no desire whatsoever to be vaccinated.

The Vikings are a microcosm of the United States population in this regard. Over 50% of Americans are fully vaccinated, some are on the path to get the second shot, and a noteworthy percentage believes the process is too risky — or all that the pandemic itself is fiction.

Those stances seem to be the general sentiment of Vikings players on the whole.

For posterity, winning cures most controversies like this. If no Vikings miss time due to vaccine-related reasoning while the team stacks wins, few folks will savage the team for pandemic management. However, if key players do miss time and the team is beset by losses, the hoopla will reemerge.