Minnesota Vikings receiver Adam Thielen took out his frustrations on the entire team following an embarrassing SNF loss to the Cooper Rush-led Cowboys.
Let’s spare the hyperbole: Things are not going well for the Vikings this season.
Minnesota’s modus operandi as of late has been to be just mediocre enough to get by but not nearly good enough to actually be good. The first eight weeks of the season are the perfect amalgamation of this; the Vikings are in second place in the NFC North with a quarterback who has a TD-to-INT ratio of 13:2.
Those seem like good things until you realize the Vikings sit three games out of first place in the NFC North with a 3-4 record that also puts them behind the Carolina Panthers for the final Wild Card spot in the NFC.
As for Cousins, his stats look good on paper and sound fine when you hear them, but when applied to actual games you get things like this:
The Vikings went 1-13 on 3rd down (8%), the worst 3rd down conversion percentage by any team in a game this season. It’s also the Vikings worst mark in a game with Kirk Cousins as the starting quarterback. @ESPNStatsInfo
— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) November 1, 2021
Frustration boiled over on Sunday night when boos reigned down inside of U.S. Bank Stadium as Cousins was outplayed by Cooper Rush. Minnesota didn’t just lose to the Cowboys backup quarterback while coming off of a bye — at home, no less — but they managed to do it on national television as well.
Adam Thielen calls out Vikings after loss to Cooper Rush-led Cowboys
After the game, Adam Thielen took to the podium and directed his ire at the entire Vikings locker room and coaching staff. He didn’t call anyone out by name, rather he placed the blame for the embarrassing showing on the entire team.
“We gotta quit just hanging in games. Every game we just hang around, hang around, let the team hang around, instead of putting our foot on the gas and going,” Thielen said.
The cliche is to say that Minnesota is better than its 3-4 record suggests, but are they really?
Cousins got props for orchestrating a game-winning comeback a few weeks ago, but that game was also against the Lions (and also at home). But everytime the Vikings have played a team with a legitimate winning record — the Panthers, who were in the middle of a horrible losing streak, notwithstanding —, they’ve lost.
Something has to change in Minnesota because this is not a new trend. Each time a season has been derailed it’s been chalked up to excuse after excuse; the kicking did them in, the offensive line was a mess, someone was hurt. But all of those things continue to plague the Vikings, begging the question of whether those are bugs in the system or if they’re just the system fans are forced to endure without any real hope of things changing.
