Kirk Cousins. Johnny Manziel. Green Beans. Explaining My Big Ten Bias

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Apr 9, 2018

If you’ve followed either purplePTSD.com, it’s sister site VikingsTerritory.com or our podcast (or my appearance on WCCO radio), you’ll know that I was one of the first and most vocal supporters and proponents of the Vikings bringing Kirk Cousins into town. A large part of that, admittedly, stems from the fact that I am heavily biased towards the Big Ten as a conference that produces players that are much more capable of making the leap from college to professional football. My thinking is that the Big Ten has much more stringent academic standards (which isn’t really saying much considering what conferences like the SEC require of their players), which means that their players are not only typically more intelligent than other players from conferences like the Big 12 or the SEC, but also that they’ve shown the ability to actually work towards something outside of the football field which shows a work ethic that extends beyond the physical work ethic most every player who makes it the NFL has. The modern NFL is a league that demands commitment every day of the year, that requires players who work hard on and off the field. Who train and watch film, who lift weights and read their playbooks. It’s not a league where you can succeed solely because you’re bigger or stronger or faster than anyone because everyone is big, everyone is fast, everyone is strong. That means that in the draft for example, you’re more likely to find someone who is capable of doing that from a conference that already expects that of its players than one that, quite frankly, doesn’t. Look at the recent statements from Johnny Manziel, a quarterback from the SEC, who literally just said that had the Cleveland Browns “done their homework” they would’ve never drafted him. Beyond that statement, Manziel basically broke down my point to a T.

In that chat with Dan Patrick (on The Dan Patrick Show), Manziel discussed why he flamed out in the NFL and while it seems pretty cut and dry (as he has a substance abuse problem), he fleshed things out beyond that to explain exactly why he started using and that was the fact that he ended up becoming depressed during his time in Cleveland and he basically self-medicated in an attempt to shut off those feelings. What triggered Manziel’s depression was the fact that he was never an “X’s and O’s” guy, he was a guy that came from a spread offense that ran what he called “screens and bubbles”, so when he came to the NFL and saw the complexity of the offenses even the Cleveland Browns ran at the time, he wasn’t able to adapt or basically just put his mind on auto-pilot while playing. He had to think about every play and when you’re thinking you’re not actually playing. It didn’t help that he didn’t have much help inside the video/locker room from the quarterbacks who had been there before him (at least until Josh McCown showed up). He followed up on the interview to say that he wasn’t blaming the QB(‘s) who were there during his rookie year (in namely Brian Hoyer), saying:

Sure, his example is a bit extreme but it does prove my point about players from the SEC, especially skill players. Another extreme but great example comes from JaMarcus Russell. This Tweet sums up that story better than I can:

Now, I’ve written about my disdain for the Vikings draft picks at the wide receiver position, really since Randy Moss was traded and it may come as zero surprise as to why (other than the fact that they’ve been swinging and a missing on nearly every single pick at the position before the fifth round). I actually wrote an article titled “The Vikings Need to STOP Drafting Wide Receivers from the SEC” (and it was on the old version of purplePTSD.com, so you can read it but it won’t have the tables that I created as they were lost in the switch to our new host/server).

https://purpleptsd.com/the-vikings-need-to-stop-drafting-wide-receivers-from-the-sec/

That article explains:

Since the Vikings traded away Randy Moss (Under a different organization, although the word I’ve heard is that Zygi told Red McCombs not to trade Moss before the sale was finalized, so they’ve always gotten points from me for that) they’ve drafted 12 wide receivers. Again, that’s 12 receivers in 12 years. Of those 12, seven of them came from the SEC. Not only that, those receivers that were mostly drafted in the first or second round.

The vast majority of the receivers taken by the Vikings (and current general manager Rick Spielman) have been from the SEC and the vast majority have flamed out. Think about it. Troy Williamson, Percy Harvin, Sidney Rice, Jarius Wright, Laquon Treadwell, Greg Childs, Cordarrelle Patterson… Bust, Great Trade Bait Bust, Product of Favre Bust, Decent Fill-In Guy, Current Bust, Injury Bust, One of the Least Smart Players in Team History Bust. There’s a lot of first rounders on that list and Patterson is a great example because he had all the physical tools needed but he literally couldn’t run routes because he couldn’t keep track of the yards he was running in his head (He’d run 5, 8, 12 and 15 yards on a 10 yard out) and he also turned down a chance to be mentored by Michael Irvin (something that his head coach, Mike Zimmer, set up for him) so he could go run in the sand to improve on his physicality. The Vikings have been extremely lucky that they took the best player available in Stefon Diggs in the fifth round and also picked up Adam Thielen as an undrafted free agent, had Thielen not developed the way he did (which isn’t something teams can rely on so I don’t give credit to Spielman for that, just in case you wanted to write that in a comment) the Vikings honestly wouldn’t be in the position that they are now. They wouldn’t have Cousins, they’d literally have a few castaway receivers like Jordy Nelson and they’d probably still have Matt Cassell as their quarterback.

Speaking of Cousins, he’s a great showcase of why I believe the Big Ten is a better source of players. His press conference was a great example as he came super prepared. He ordered his purple and gold tie on Amazon Prime three days before the presser and even knew who Sid Hartman was (not only that, he knew his birthday). He spoke about being prepared in that press conference and when it comes to the quarterback position I’m not breaking any news here when I talk about how important it is to have a guy who is the first to the facility and the last to leave. That dedication extends beyond the playbook and watching film, as Cousins is also apparently following the lead of another Big Ten standout in Tom Brady (and another Big Ten… You get the idea, in Drew Brees) when it comes to what he puts into his body. Cousins has been described as tough and durable and those labels come from plays where his body takes a lot of punishment. In an attempt to offset those hits and play longer than players even five or ten years ago could or did, players like Brady and Cousins are adhering to a strict diet that is customized to their body based on the results of their bloodwork. Cousins explained his reasoning for joining the growing list of players who are taking the “Brady Diet”:

“It took the fourth or fifth time hearing, ‘You need to do this,’ and then reading about Drew Brees and Tom Brady and others who are your peers doing it. I realized, ‘If I want to hang with these guys, then it’s time to stop playing around.’”

The bloodwork shows which foods take more energy for one’s body to break down, which means that a body might be sensitive to certain foods or that certain foods actually drain you of energy because that energy is busy dealing with the dinner you just ate. Cousins’ tests showed that he was sensitive to “nearly all dairy, eggs, wheat and gluten” with a couple other random things like green beans, something that was confirmed by his retest.

Because of that, Cousins, like Brady and Brees (and ugh, Aaron Rodgers), is on a highly regimented diet that has zero eggs, dairy and/or food made with wheat of any kind. That means he eats mostly ice cubes and pictures of meat (black and white ink, as his tests showed that he’s sensitive to blue and red inks). Actually, he eats a lot of lean beef, poultry, fish and some fruits and vegetables. That means that he always has to plan ahead when it comes to his meals, something that the Vikings were aware of when they had him in town for the biggest free agency meeting in team history. Most fans are aware that the Vikings default to Manny’s Steakhouse for their free agency woo-ing but apparently they called an audible and ended up eating while standing in the fruit section of Whole Foods until they were asked to, you know, stop it. Really they ended up at Capital Grille, something that showed the meticulous Cousins that the team did their homework as well.

That means good things for this Vikings team as it shows that Cousins is completely committed to his craft in that he is trying to get better every year on the field but also ensuring that there will be many, many more years to come on the field. That level of commitment is something that any player can have regardless of conference and while there are good and bad examples on each side of this argument, I felt it was necessary to explain my Big Ten bias because it’s something that comes up fairly regularly. Full disclosure, I did graduate from a Big Ten school (despite this B- style of writing) in the University of Minnesota, a school that ironically should make me hate the Big Ten considering how terrible their football program is.

But as a whole, I just think that when it comes to the draft, especially, you need to find all the “pros” and “cons” that you can when evaluating players and the additional “pros” of having players that went to good schools, or graduated with degrees like that of Kirk Cousins’ Kinesiology degree, you know you’re at least getting a guy who can hit the books when necessary. Beyond that, you have players who come from a more pro-style offense (see Manziels comments about the spread offense that most Big Ten teams abhor, outside of that horrible Rich Rodriquez era at Michigan). Also, the Big Ten has three of the top five stadiums in college football in terms of seating capacity (Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan), which helps in terms of the pressure that comes from playing in the NFL as well (as if you can play in front of 110,000 people in all white you can definitely play in front of the 5,000 that are on their phones during a pre-season game in Miami). Those are things that I think that Spielman has overlooked, to be fair, and again that doesn’t mean that these players are sure things, just that a lot of them will have a few advantages that players like Treadwell or Patterson (who both ran limited route trees) didn’t have.

That’s just a long way for me to say that I hope to God they draft Billy Price at the end of the month. That is if he isn’t eating green beans.

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