Vikings Not Focused on “Revenge” Angle of Sunday’s Game
For the first time this weekend, Kirk Cousins will visit U.S. Bank Stadium as a guest.
Vikings Not Focused on “Revenge” Angle of Sunday’s Game
Cousins’ new team, the Atlanta Falcons, travel to the Twin Cities for a date with the 10-2 Minnesota Vikings, a club Cousins led for six seasons.
On the surface, the contest might feel like a “revenge” game between the two franchises — Cousins’ former team and his new squad. The problem with that theory? Vikings players aren’t sizing it up that way.
NFL Network‘s Tom Pelissero asked wide receiver Justin Jefferson if he had a message for Cousins ahead of the signal-caller’s return to Minneapolis. Jefferson basically said, “Nope.”
“Not all all. We are focused on us. We are not focused on any single person or anybody that comes into the building. We’re just worrying about us, focusing on what we got to do to make us better,” Jefferson said Sunday.
Jefferson also said this week that he hasn’t talked to Cousins since his departure. Ironically, some folks theorized that if Cousins left in free agency last March — he ultimately did — Jefferson might not sign an extension with the Vikings because of his ardor for Cousins. That theory was outlandishly false. Jefferson re-upped with the Vikings soon after Cousins’ exodus.
Last summer, Jefferson went out of his way to wish Cousins well and acknowledge the business side of the NFL. “I always knew that Kirk was going to do whatever he needs to do for his businesses-wise. I just knew that everything just wasn’t the way he wanted it to be here, especially just with having to pay me and having to pay so many other different guys,” Jefferson told Rich Eisen in July.
“I feel like he just wanted a new start, a new opportunity to start with Atlanta and a clean slate, and I’m not mad at him at all for that. I’m grateful for what he has brought to me and the things that we have accomplished together.”
Cousins has fallen on harsh times with his employer, producing poor individual showings in team losses in back-to-back-to-back games. His Falcons began the season 6-3 and find themselves at .500 entering Week 14, the date with Minnesota.
The ex-Viking desperately needs a get-right game or risks falling on the ash heap of quarterbacks who have disintegrated in real-time in their late 30s.
Atlanta, as a reminder, has rookie quarterback Michael Penix Jr. waiting to take the QB1 job before too long. Cousins must deliver efficient performances in the season’s final five games to keep Penix Jr. on the bench, or so the theory goes.
The Vikings are favored to defeat the Falcons by 5.5 points. But don’t call it a revenge game because the purple team doesn’t see it that way.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. The show features guests, analysis, and opinion on all things related to the purple team, with 4-7 episodes per week. His Vikings obsession dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ Basset Hounds, and The Doors (the band). He follows the NBA as closely as the NFL.
All statistics provided by Pro Football Reference / Stathead; all contractual information provided by OverTheCap.com.
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