Dear Minnesota Vikings, just shut up and play football

The Minnesota Vikings have only played four games this year, but a number of off-the-field events have already turned this season into a full-fledged circus.

Following his team’s loss to the Chicago Bears on Sunday, Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen offered his take on some of the struggles that the offense has been experiencing this season.

It seemed like a normal reaction to a disappointing loss to a division rival, but Thielen’s comments were taken out of context by a number of national outlets and what ended up happening next just made things even worse.

During a recording of his weekly podcast, Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins went out of his way to apologize to Thielen and Stefon Diggs for not hitting them on a few of his passes this year.

Apologize? Really? This is something that Cousins thought would be a good idea? If anything his “apology” made the Minnesota quarterback look even more robotic than he already is.

Cousins seems to have this vision in his head of how an NFL quarterback is supposed to act and sound. But has anyone ever heard Tom Brady, Drew Brees, or Russell Wilson publicly apologize to their receivers for not hitting them on a few passes in a game?

Following his podcast with Thielen, Cousins proceeded to, unsurprisingly, make things even worse by saying that he felt like the Vikings receiver was being unfairly criticized for some of the things he said after the game on Sunday, so that’s why he apologized.

Thielen was being unfairly criticized? Okay, sure. It was just another attempt by Cousins to try and twist the narrative more into his favor and make himself look like the good guy in the situation.

While all of this mumbo jumbo was going on, Diggs was using a different method to express his frustrations with the team this season. He went with the old “I had a cold” method and was absent from the team’s facilities on Monday and Wednesday.

With speculation of Diggs possibly wanting a trade already going on prior to the Vikings’ loss to the Bears, his “cold” only added more fuel to the fire.

Speaking of adding fuel to the fire, instead of denying the rumors that he wants to be traded on Thursday and allowing the rest of his team to focus on their actual job this week, Diggs decided to just say, “there’s truth to all rumors.”

He could’ve squashed everything right then and there, but his intentions obviously were not to do that. Diggs also added that he’s “always put the team before (himself),” which is incredibly hard to believe with his actions this week.

The Minnesota receiver is clearly not happy with his role on the team and it’s something that has probably been going on for longer than just this season. But Diggs’ decision to skip out on meetings and practices is not going to fix anything.

Multiple reports have indicated that the Vikings have zero desire to trade their talented young receiver. So if Diggs truly someone who puts the team first before himself like he said on Thursday, then he needs to suck it up and just do what is asked of him in Minnesota’s current offense.

The Vikings obviously have some kinks to work out on the offensive side of the ball. But missing valuable time during the weeks leading up to games is not going to help anything get better.

For everyone that is frustrated with how the offense has performed so far this year, which certainly goes beyond Cousins, Diggs, and Thielen, they have to remember that they’ve only played four games this so far and it’s been with a first-time play-caller running the offense.

There is still plenty of time to fix things and figure out an offensive game plan that works best for the team moving forward. And if Minnesota moves forward with an offense that utilizes Diggs less than he would like, then that’s something that he’s just going to have to deal with.

The Vikings’ main goal is to win games and ultimately win a Super Bowl. Worrying about if a receiver is happy or not with his amount of targets is certainly not at the top of their list of priorities.

With all of this being said, Minnesota can shut a lot of people up with a convincing win over the New York Giants on Sunday.

The Vikings actually have a great opportunity to win the next four games on their schedule. If they can do this, then all the public chatter will likely switch to what Minnesota is doing on the field rather than everything that is happening off of it.