Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins is back from a five-day COVID hiatus for two days of practices with the 49ers.
He met with reporters on Wednesday morning.
Cousins said he was feeling “a little lousy” last Thursday, resulting in the COVID test. By rule (as of 2022) he was required to stay away for five days. He said he didn’t know whether he would have played in the preseason opener against the Raiders, if he’d been around. He later said he would have played a half-dozen snaps, at most.
He says he’s now “feeling good” and “ready to go.” He explained that the five days fell at a good time, if he was going to miss any time during camp, given the travel to and from Nevada and the day off on Monday.
And so he’s back for sessions with a team coached by a man who knows Cousins well -- so well that Kyle Shanahan didn’t scout the class of quarterbacks in 2017 (including Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson) because Shanahan believed the 49ers would sign Cousins in free agency the following year.
His best year in Minnesota ended with a thud against the 49ers in the divisional round. The perpetual challenge for the Vikings, who always are relevant, is to be good enough to compete with whichever NFC team emerges as the best of the bunch in any given year. For more than 45 years, they haven’t been able to emerge from the 14 then 15 not 16 teams as the NFC’s representative in the Super Bowl.
