Patrick Reusse, Michael Rand Beg for Vikings to Ditch “Anti-Vaxxer” QB Kirk Cousins

You may have thought that Minnesota Vikings quarterback, Kirk Cousins, had found his way onto the good side of local media members, after he won the Korey Stringer media good-guy award this past season… but the opposite has proven to be true.

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Instead, we’ve seen much of Minnesota sports media doing their best to run Kirk out of town all offseason. Imagine an entire local media infrastructure trying to run a top-10 quarterback out of an NFL town, while he is playing the best football of his career.

That’s what most media members in town have been doing for months. Mainstream names who have gone on the record with strong opinions that the Vikings should move on from Kirk include (just off the op of my head): Phil Mackey (SKOR North), Judd Zulgad (SKOR North), LaVelle E. Neal (Star Tribune), Patrick Reusse (Star Tribune) and Michael Rand (Star Tribune).

Star Tribune Veterans desperately want Kirk Cousins out of town

All of the above media personalities are veterans in this market. Patrick Reusse and Michael Rand are both long-time Star Tribune reporters who have been trying to write Cousins out of town for years, and that didn’t change on Monday during Rand’s ‘Daily Delivery’ podcast episode, which featured Reusse as his guest.

Rand’s show is posted every weekday morning. Some episodes are good, others not so much. Some are informative, others aren’t. But he’s been using both his podcast and his Star Tribune columns more often recently, to let everyone know just how much he wants the Minnesota Vikings to move on from Kirk Cousins. Monday’s episode was no different.

This time, Rand used the most talented QB in NFL history, Patrick Mahomes, as his main explainer for why the Vikings need to drop Kirk. Only Michael Rand knows about them, but apparently there are a bunch more Pat Mahomes (or at least Pat Mahomes’ lite-versions) out there just waiting for the Vikings to discover. If true, this information would have been nice to know a long time ago.

“[Patrick Mahomes] is exactly why everybody’s chasing a quarterback, in today’s game. It’s just one more reason why you can’t stay with [Kirk] Cousins anymore. You gotta try something else. You gotta see if you can find, if not your Mahomes, which is once in a generation, someone who is closer to that, that can help you win a game like that.”

Michael Rand – Daily Delivery Podcast (Star Tribune)

Most times these media members try talking their audiences into dumping Kirk Cousins, they contradict themselves without even realizing it. There’s a high level of comedy built into a local reporter saying the Vikings need to dump Cousins so they can pursue a QB more like Patrick Mahomes.

So Minnesota Vikings should dump Cousins because he isn’t Pat Mahomes?

I mean… is anybody going to tell Michael that dozens of 1st round QBs have been drafted since Patrick Mahomes entered the league and you could name with less than one hand how many are currently better than Kirk Cousins.

Of all people, you would think veteran reporters like Rand and Reusse, who covered Christian Ponder, Tavarus Jackson and Gus Frerotte as Vikings starting quarterbacks, would remember that this organization has been trying for two decades to find someone “closer to [Mahomes]” than what Kirk Cousins is, and they failed miserably.

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That’s why they “settled” for Kirk in the first place, remember? So now that Cousins has finally transformed himself into an elite QB that his teammates love and who is clearly one of the best QB leaders in the league (a huge knock on him before 2022-23), these media members (and half of the fanbase) want to kick him to the curb? Make it make sense…

Reusse: ‘Ditch Cousins so he can prove he’s the Anti-Vax hero’…

But then, Patrick Reusse — the now senior columnist in the Twin Cities — stepped into the conversation and may have given away why media bias still plagues Kirk Cousins, even as his rise in popularity elsewhere continues to go through the roof.

After cheering on his colleague’s Cousins dismay for about 45 seconds (seriously, you could hear him in the background), Reusse said the quiet part of media’s problem with Kirk out loud.

“You and I are both on the, ‘that’s enough Kirk, thanks’ [bandwagon]. Go somewhere where you can win. Let’s see if you got it. You had a 13-4 team. You know, you had a couple pretty good teams here and it never happened. So go somewhere and prove it. Prove that you’re this phenom that anti-vaxxers think you are.”

Patrick Reusse – Daily Delivery Podcast (Star Tribune)

Me personally, I’m hoping the Minnesota Vikings do not make any decisions this offseason based on a player’s vaccination status. I would prefer they base it on the best plan to win football games, both now and in the future.

But, that’s just me. I can’t speak for local media member staples like Patrick Reusse and Michael Rand. I’ll let those “gentlemen” speak for themselves.