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The Vikings reaffirmed their "run it back" mantra this week at the NFL owners' meetings in Florida. Head coach Kevin O'Connell spoke of ways he could help Kirk Cousins thrive while also indicating he thinks he can get more out of Garrett Bradbury.
Owner Mark Wilf reiterated that the team can "compete at the highest level" and asserted that the Vikings "have a lot of great players on this roster."
Many of those players were on the roster for back-to-back seasons in which the Vikings hovered at or below .500 much of the time before missing the playoffs.
If the Vikings are going to improve while employing a lot of those same players, it is largely going to be up to O'Connell and the coaches underneath him to get more out of them.
While this seems like wishful thinking more than a plan — and perhaps is borne more out of necessity than anything because of salary cap constraints and unwilling trade partners — one thing O'Connell said this week did make me think about Cousins in a new way.
In talking about how Cousins likes known outcomes — tell me what this play is supposed to accomplish, so I can execute it — O'Connell conveyed a deep understanding of Cousins that goes back to their time in Washington in 2017 where O'Connell was Cousins' QB coach.
"It's like when we talk about the absence of communication, some negativity can seep in. In the absence of structure, a lot of questioning can sneak in," O'Connell said. "Hopefully we're spending those hours clearly defining a plan of attack for not only Kirk but our entire offense."
For all the critiques of Cousins — some fair, some over-the-top — we sometimes tend to focus only on the results and not the circumstances.
Cousins has had a different offensive coordinator in every season since 2016, the last two with Washington and all four with the Vikings.
The end of his tenure in Washington saw him playing on a franchise tag twice in a row, with the organization unwilling to commit to him long-term even though he was playing for an offensive-minded head coach (Jay Gruden).
The Vikings valued Cousins, but his head coach here for four years probably didn't want him.
In O'Connell, Cousins might finally have a head coach who knows him, understands him and wants him.
Whether that translates into the competitiveness the Vikings crave remains to be seen, but in this case a fresh start with the same team might be a good thing.
