Minnesota Vikings – Collin Kottke: All-Around Swell Guy

Kirk Cousins finally gives the Minnesota Vikings quarterback stability

Back when I was a school-aged boy, my mother would take me shopping annually right before the school year began. I imagine there wasn’t much out of the ordinary from this very common practice, except for one yearly purchase: a Minnesota Vikings starting quarterback shirsey.

The fact that getting a new shirsey every time the Vikings got a new quarterback was a yearly occurrence is pretty sad when you sit and think about it.

Any Green Bay Packer fan that did the same practice would only have bought two shirseys in the past 25 years: Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. My childhood Vikings shirseys saw a line featuring Brad Johnson, Donovan McNabb, Brett Favre and, yes, even Christian Ponder.

The shirsey buying eventually stopped for myself, but the continuing factory-line of Vikings starting quarterbacks didn’t. Since 2000, only Daunte Culpepper has been the planned starting quarterback for more than two seasons for Minnesota.

That factory-line will finally stop now.

We might now know all the details yet of the Kirk Cousins signing with the Minnesota Vikings, but we do know one thing, it will finally give the Vikings stability in a position that the team hasn’t had stability in more than a couple times in nearly 60 years as a franchise.

Cousins might not be the to the level of the future Hall of Famer in Green Bay, but he is the first quarterback since Culpepper to, more than likely, be, frankly, good for a stretch of years in purple.

Granted, I am assuming a lot. Cousins could be a flop, but it is unlikely. Heck, he might just get to the same level as that Green Bay QB. Cousins is set to have better seasons than what he has had in Washington and those were pretty darn good.

What I am trying to say is this: the Vikings finally have a quarterback, folks.

When was the last time you could confidently say that? Probably 2009 with Brett Favre and the one game of Sam Bradford to start the 2017 season. Now Vikings fans can look ahead to the season confident in the quarterback. That is a 1 in 10,000 feeling in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Vikings fans are used to a lot of questions, but there is really only one question that should remain: are we going to get a white or purple Kirk Cousins shirsey?

Minnesota Vikings Shanked The Kluwe Report Non-Release

The Minnesota Vikings are never exactly shining examples of good PR. We could down the list and there would be a lot of things that the Vikings didn’t really have a lot of control over. For instance, Love Boat was a bad incident, buy boys will be boys and there was nothing the higher ups at Winter Park really could do. That’s not the case in the latest controversy that is brewing in Eden Prairie.

In January, ex-Vikings punter Chris Kluwe released a diary-like post to Deadspin describing what was seen as a very unfriendly environment to the LGBT community and their allies. Kluwe’s post was really damning towards special teams coach Mike Priefer. The franchise said they would investigate.

Earlier this week, the Vikings apparently told Kluwe and his legal team that the team would not be publicly releasing any of their report. On Friday, Kluwe answered back via Twitter and this saga will only keep on going straight into Training Camp and probably into the 2014 season. It is really the Vikings fault this time.

Throw out any way you feel about the LGBT community, so you can think about this issue clearly. Let’s strip it down to bare bones:

Player posts article saying the Vikings did something bad, Vikings say they’ll investigate that something, Vikings investigate, investigation takes a long time, investigation is finished and Vikings say they’ll not release anything.

Doesn’t that seem sketchy?

It sure seems sketchy to me.

By not releasing anything, the Vikings make it seem like they have something to hide. I don’t know if they do and the only people who know that answer right now are probably in Winter Park trying to put a fire extinguisher to this PR fire.

Let’s put this into an everyday situation. Ever ask someone to look up the price of something for you and then they say something to the tune of ‘oh, you don’t want to know’? You know why they didn’t tell you? They didn’t want to disappoint you. The Vikings are making this look like you, me and the rest of the public do not want to know what’s going on in Winter Park.

The Vikings don’t have that luxury. No one in any of the major sports has that luxury, no less an NFL team, nonetheless the NFL team in a town that loves said NFL team way more than any of the other pro teams and college squads.

It’s such a horrible PR move by not releasing anything. Maybe the Vikings found out something that they are not proud of, but it needs to be heard. This report might force the Vikings into doing things that they don’t want to do, but doing things that are not wanted is a much better alternative to having a franchise that will no longer be trusted.

The Minnesota Sports Attitude Has To Stop

The infamous weeping blondes. Picture via: http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/900*619/7patr1221.jpg

David Ortiz taunted us. Not even on the baseball diamond or even about baseball. Big Papi taunted the Minnesota sports fan about basketball on Twitter. The former Twins first baseman/DH turned Boston Red Sox DH took time out of his feud with Tampa Bay Rays ace David Price to troll the seemingly helpless Minnesotan. Oh, how far we have fallen.

As we open up June in the state of Minnesota, a couple storylines run wild amongst the rubes: how horrible Joe Mauer looks and what in the world is going to happen to Kevin Love. The faces of the Target Plaza franchises are currently the talking points and points that aren’t exactly good for them personally or for their current franchise.

It’s been ten years since the Minnesota Timberwolves were in the NBA Playoffs. Never say never, but it will more than likely be a four or five year absence before the Minnesota Twins return to play in the MLB playoffs. Hell, the Vikings look to be in a rebuilding year, so we might as well throw that in here, too. This is our outlook. Our very Minnesotan piss poor outlook.

We ignore the Golden Gophers winning the NIT tournament despite it being Richard Pitino’s first year as coach. We ignore Jerry Kill getting the Gophers back to bowl games and building back up what Tim Brewster tore to the ground. We ignore the fact that the Minnesota Wild won a playoff series, their first in ten years. We ignore the Minnesota Lynx who have been to the WNBA Finals three years in a row, won two of them if you hadn’t noticed, and are the only undefeated team in the association in 2014. Snap out of this crappy attitude people.

It’s sports. The ball won’t always bounce your way if we want to be cliché, but there’s no reason to have this poor, poor pitiful me attitude about the sports teams in this state. Success ebbs and flows. Not that long ago, the Twins were winning division championships, the Timberwolves were making the playoffs every year and the Vikings had a boatload… of talent.

The Wild will win a Stanley Cup sooner than later, they are way too young and talented not to. The Twins have Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano and a field of dreams of prospects coming up the pipeline that we lead this team to the playoffs again. Give it a couple years of fermentation and a couple years of Aaron Rodgers getting older, the Vikings will probably see the top of the NFC North soon enough. If the Timberwolves pull off the Kevin Love trade right, they should be setting themselves up for success sooner than later as well.

Has it been a longer valley of defeat than most, God, I hope so, but let’s stop being an easy stomping ground for Big Papi slam tweets. It’s hard to imagine, but maybe one day the Twin Cities can steal the hashtag Ortiz used and claim themselves to be: #CitiesofChampions.

Business of Sports Getting In The Way of Sports

Chances are likely that the Minnesota Vikings won’t make a franchise altering move before Thursday’s NFL Draft and it all depends who they select on Thursday on how franchise altering Thursday might be. If the Vikings were smart they would pull the trigger on an Adrian Peterson trade between now and then.

I can hear you already saying, ‘Collin! They can’t trade Adrian, he’s awesome and popular!’ That’s the problem.

The rule of thumb is that NFL running backs start to break down around the age of 29 or 30. Adrian Peterson is currently 29. He is still productive enough to be valued by a contending team, though. For a team like the Vikings that is in rebuilding mode and realistically a couple of years away from Super Bowl contention, Peterson doesn’t really fit into any plans or at least he doesn’t need to.

The Vikings find themselves in an interesting spot. When it comes to in terms of football, purely just the sport, it’s a no-brainer to trade Peterson. Football, NFL football, is not just football, though. The NFL is a business and that business keeps Purple Jesus in purple.

Adrian Peterson sells tickets and that’s why he’s still a Viking. Peterson is the only guy this team can currently plaster on billboards with everyone knowing who he is. Peterson has been that guy for his whole career with the Vikings other than two years when a certain Mississippi native was playing gunslinger, er, quarterback. The Vikings moving to the outdoors for a couple seasons and the fall out of sorts from the seat license fiasco all results in the email being sent from a New Jersey mansion to Rick Spiellman that simply says, ‘Don’t trade #28.’

Sports being a business brings a lot of ethical questions up and only about 120 people have to face these ethical questions. We’ve found out recently that despite the group being so small, some pretty unethical people get in.

The Vikings would be a better team without Adrian Peterson in the long run, but they are not trading him for the business aspects of the team. Is that right?

I’d think the Vikings would make more money in the long run by winning a Super Bowl than holding on to one guy, but there might be a reason that I type this on a laptop and I’m not saying it in a conference call at Winter Park.

At one time in the world of sports it was all about having a winning team and a team that might just win the championship in their sport. Now it is about making as much money as you can with the assets that you currently have. That’s the way business is and sports are now a business, we just have to deal with it.

I would trade Adrian Peterson. Everyone that could look at the situation rationally from a football sense would trade him too. It’s funny looking at football decisions by jersey sales, but that’s the world that we live in. It’s also the reason that Johnny Manziel would be an owner’s wet dream.

A Rarity: Nine Head Coaches In Minnesota Vikings History

The Minnesota Vikings have a new head coach; they hired now former Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer to be the ninth coach in franchise history. That’s the part that amazes me, only nine coaches in the 52 seasons of Vikings football.

Granted, Bud Grant did swallow up 17 of those years, but still this is an impressive feat. I’ve written multiple times about how the Twins have only had two managers since 1986, which is simply unheard of, because the Vikings small amount of coaches is impressive.

Let’s put this in context, the Minnesota Timberwolves have been around for 25 seasons and they’ve gone through nine coaches already. The same amount of coaches in half the time, it’s sad neither of the tactics are working because neither franchise has won the big one.

I don’t if I should be applauding the Vikings for only having nine coaches in 50 plus years or note that four of those coaches have been at the helm in the last ten years. It’s probably just an anomaly with the benefactor of having a hall of fame coach, who still has an office at team headquarters.

Congratulations, Mike Zimmer, you have been given the keys to a ride that only a few have taken for a spin. Some have crashed and burned, some have ran some pretty nice laps, but none have crossed the finished line coming in first.

Your new ride might need to go to the shop a couple times in the next year in order to make it a fine tune machine. You’ll have to keep it outside for a couple years while they’re building you a shiny new garage, too, but nevertheless it’s yours now, make her yours.

Take the keys, put the pedal to the medal and don’t make the franchise hire a tenth head coach for a long time.