If the proliferation of highly effective COVID-19 vaccines has done one thing for us, aside from providing life-saving protection against a deadly virus, it's to reveal exactly what sorts of dickweeds have always been surrounding us in our daily lives. For example, before the vaccines existed, I always thought of Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins as a corny, harmlessly dim guy who I would never want to hang out with, but who for the most part seemed decent enough. He was just a dude. But now, I know the truth: Kirk Cousins fucking sucks!
All you need to do in order to understand just how much Cousins sucks is watch his press conference from Vikings training camp yesterday. Cousins spoke to reporters upon his return from the NFL's reserve/COVID-19 list, which he had been previously placed on after coming into close contact with rookie quarterback Kellen Mond, who tested positive for the virus. Cousins is essentially the only functional quarterback on the Vikings' roster, and so any time he has to spend on the sidelines (he missed four practices while on the reserve list) is a huge detriment to his team. The good news for Cousins and the Vikings is that there is a readily available method by which Cousins can greatly reduce the likelihood that he will need to be placed on the reserve list again once the season starts and the games start mattering: He just needs to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
One might think that Cousins, who surely wants to play as many games as possible this season and help the Vikings win football games, would take his recent stint on the reserve list as a valuable lesson. He's now had firsthand experience with what kind of havoc the NFL's COVID-19 protocols can wreak on a team, and knows exactly what needs to be done in order to prevent a similar situation from playing out during the regular season. Everyone's interests are neatly aligned here: Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer, who has been vocally displeased by his team's overall low vaccination rate, wants Cousins to play in football games; Cousins's teammates want him to play football games; Vikings fans want ... well ... they at least understand that Cousins playing in football games is their best option at the moment. Cousins can right now, today, take the vaccine and help ensure that everyone gets what they want. It appears he is not going to do that.
Cousins spent yesterday's press conference attempting to convince everyone in the room that he is singularly focused on and committed to avoiding further stays on the reserve list, but not by taking the vaccine. Cousins talked about how strictly he plans to follow the NFL's protocols, and how his commitment to showing up for his team is so deep that he would be willing to conduct his meetings outside—"If it means meeting outside under a goal post in January"—or even encase himself in plexiglass. "I've even thought about, should I just set up, literally, plexiglass around where I sit, so that this could never happen?" Cousins said. "I've thought about it, because I'm going to do whatever it takes."
It's sort of incredible to watch something like this play out. I highly recommend watching the video footage of Cousins's press conference, because I don't know if you'll ever see a better example of someone's neatly crafted persona collapsing under the weight of their actions. Here we have Kirk Cousins, a guy who has spent his entire career fashioning and presenting himself as a Good Old-Fashioned Quarterback—always positive, always willing to do whatever it takes to help the team win, always trying to convince people that his mediocre talent is not the only thing he has to offer to a football team—revealing himself to be the exact opposite of that. Kirk Cousins is just a selfish asshole, but one who is totally incapable of conceiving of himself as anything but. That's how you end up with him saying genuinely insane things like "I'm going to do whatever it takes" in the middle of explaining how he is actually not at all willing to do what it takes. He just doesn't have the language to express himself in any other way. It's like watching an android try to convince itself it's human. It would be enough to make you feel bad for him, were he not such a dickweed.
