MINNEAPOLIS — Is Kirk Cousins caught inside his own head?
"We're really good at remembering the negative experiences, our brains are wired for that,” said Simon Almaer, a Mental Skills Coach with Premier Sport Psychology in Edina.
Cousins threw a career high 30 touchdowns in his first season with the Vikings. But, with the season on the line, he crumbled, throwing for a career low - 132 yards - in another crushing loss.
On Sunday's broadcast, the announcers kept discussing how Cousins is, how much he studies the data. So, he certainly knows his numbers: $84 million dollar contract, 17 turnovers in 2018, and just 5-25 in his career against teams with a winning record.
But, at 30 years old, having all this negative baggage, can Cousins – or any player – flip the script?
"We all can continue to grow, we all can bounce back from adversity,” said Almaer. “There are a lot of great Quarterbacks that haven’t come on the scene immediately and been the very best, and that’s a case across a wide range of sports and performance areas.”
Different sport, but David Plummer went through a similar situation.
"I swam for 25 years and I got to spend a month of my career as an Olympian,” said Plummer, a former star swimmer at the University of Minnesota.
Plummer was 30 when he competed in his first Olympic Games, winning two medals at Rio in 2016. His one shot and he prepared - mentally - by watching videos of himself winning.
“You have to think – this is what I wanted. This is what I’ve been doing. This is what I’ve worked really hard to get – this pressure. I earned this pressure,” said Plummer. "It's not always staying positive because you're going to have some negative thoughts, you're going to think, you know, what if this doesn't go well, what if this happens, but it's being able to let those things go.”
Same thing for Cousins. With two more guaranteed years left on his contract with the Vikings, he needs to leave his bad big-game history in the past and move on - mentally.
“How can I practice for that? How can I used imagery or visualization to prepare for that even better?” said Almaer. "It takes work, it doesn't just happen through luck."