The media turns on Kirk Cousins(and Mike Zimmer too)

Maybe it's just the stuff I've been exposed to since the Vikings loss to the Saints, but it appears to me that the media both on a national level as well as locally, has chosen that game as their final excuse to unleash the hounds on Kirk Cousins, and to a lesser extent Mike Zimmer.

The Zimmer stuff is not entirely new. Patrick Reusse wrote a very personal hit piece on him following the 2016 collapse, and plenty of others have taken their shots. It seems no approach with the media will appease said media. If a coach is dull, they rip him for being dull. But if Zimmer gets a little prickly with them, then they get totally outraged. It's always the wrong thing to say, or the wrong tone to take. Zimmer is in year 5 here, and he's had a lot of success. He's a damn good coach, but the media seems to be turning on him.

Kirk Cousins is 8 games into year 1, and that turn is already beginning. There are certain media members who were trashing Cousins seemingly from the moment it first became a likelihood that he would become a Viking. He's not any good, they said. He's not that much better than Keenum, they said. He's not worth the money. He's going to destroy our salary cap(remember that chestnut?).

Well, he's spent the first 2 months of his Vikings tenure disproving all the naysayers. He's played the best football of his career. By any measure he is at least one of the 10 best QBs in the NFL, and maybe top 5. The decision to go get this guy was unquestionably the right move. No, he is not literal perfection. He's made a few bad plays. ALL QBs do. He is not completely above criticism on his mistakes, but when his critics act like it's all bad they are full of it.

The Saints game has these assholes coming out of the woodwork. Nationally there was a Bleacher Report article saying he is already a flop, and ESPN devoted a segment to trashing Cousins too. Now, you gotta always take some of these national mouthpieces with a grain of salt anyway, cause these fuckers don't even watch any games or have any knowledge about anything. They're paid to spew ignorant hot takes for stupid viewers and readers who don't know any better. If you think Skip Bayless actually sits there on his couch and watches football you're delusional.

But the local media should know better then to spew similar idiocy. There are a couple takes that really irritated me. One was about the pick six play. The play WAS Diggs's fault. Diggs admitted it. Anyone who saw the play cannot deny the play was on Diggs. But apparently Cousins committed a grave sin by not taking full responsibility himself for the play. Apparently he's being a terrible leader by not doing so. What a crock of horseshit. Aaron Rodgers throws teammates under the bus all the time, and he never takes any heat. Cousins is a great leader.

And then there is just the overall take that everything that goes wrong is the fault of the quarterback. The Vikings are 4-3-1. They would at BEST be 3-5 right now with any of the other QB options available to them. But here came the "Derr Kirk can't win a big game" and all that kind of crap. These people seem mad that Kirk has not already won us a super bowl. I'm so tired of people bringing up the $84 million too. That is such a non-issue at this point. The lunatics insisted we were going to lose all our young players to salary cap hell, but since signing Kirk we signed Hunter, Kendricks, Diggs and Richardson. And his contract has already been surpassed by a few other QB deals, and will be passed by more before the 3 years are up.

The Vikings have some problems. They have some flaws that could even keep them out of the playoffs. Kirk Cousins is not one of them. He is a major asset. He is not Superman. But are we seriously going to have to listen to these media assholes spend the next two and a half years(and maybe longer) tearing this guy down at every turn?