It’s good that the Vikings won’t be scrapping the last workout of their offseason program. Their new quarterback thinks he needs it.
Kirk Cousins wasn’t pleased with his performance on Wednesday, the second day of a three-day minicamp.
“I was pretty salty walking off the field,” Cousins said, via Chris Tomasson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “I’m really frustrated. I do not want to walk into the summer with a bad taste in my mouth about practice, so hopefully we can finish really strong [Thursday] and be feeling good going into the summer.
“Even one bad decision in practice kind of bothers me all afternoon, and I can be a bit of a grouch when I go home.”
The salt came from a third-down red-zone drill during which Cousins threw two interceptions in three plays.
But there’s a silver lining; Cousins is learning through trial and error what he can’t do.
“On the first one, I just couldn’t get all the way through the throw, so the ball died on me,” Cousins said. “The second one, I was testing things a little bit and trying to see what I could get away with, and I learned pretty quickly that I can’t get away with that throw. . . . Some of the beauty of (spring drills) is that you can test and experiment. . . . You’ve just got to learn from them.”
The learning continues into training camp, with Cousins still having plenty of time to get up to speed with his new teammates and his new offense as the Vikings try to build on what they did in 2017. And it’s still not clear what will count as success in 2018.
Ultimately, it’s not realistic to except the Vikings to at least get back to the NFC title game, especially since that’s something they’ve accomplished only six times in the last 40 years.