MINNEAPOLIS — During one of the Vikings' practices this spring, Kirk Cousins dropped back on a particular play, moved off of his first target based on the coverage he saw from the defense and threw toward one of his secondary targets on the play.
After the play, new Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell, the former NFL quarterback who'd been Cousins' position coach five years earlier, encouraged him to change his thought process.
"He said, 'Hey, I want you to take that [first option] with that look [on defense]. Don't progress [through your reads].' And prior to him saying that I would've progressed every time," Cousins said. "We probably ran that play a half dozen times again in the spring. And when we got that look, I was going to take that [first] option.
