Hitting the Books: Avid Reading Connects Vikings Position Groups

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So far, Cousins is the only player in the Vikings locker room that has authored a book. His Game Changer: Faith, Football & Finding Your Way was published in June 2013 after his rookie season with Washington.


"The book that we wrote was really geared toward young people. It was really inspired by the speech I gave at the Big Ten luncheon," Cousins said. "So it really wasn't a memoir or a biography, autobiography, in any way; it was more of just a book written to help give young people a resource to learn from."


He hasn't ruled out the idea of writing another book someday.


"The hard part is deciding when you want to write it," Cousins said. "I think when I retire from football, you still feel like you have more you want to do in life, and you haven't finished the story. I think it's always tough to decide when you want to write it."


Cousins values the learning that one can do "through books and through people," an approach he learned from Lead for God's Sake, which he read when he was with Washington.


"When you think about our faith and how we grow in our faith, it's really through hearing teaching from other people and then reading the Bible. In community with other people and engaging in the Bible," Cousins said. "When you strip it all away, you realize the importance of books. That quote in that book really reminded me of that, and it just kind of further drove me into reading even more to really try to grow my knowledge base and understanding and hopefully help me as a football player and a person."


Will any Vikings teammates have books written about – or by – them one day?


I posed this question to each of the interviewees for this story: Which teammate would you most want to read a book about?


Cousins veered a bit off-script, pointing outside the roster to longtime Vikings equipment manager Dennis Ryan.


"Almost 50 years with the Vikings? I would guess he has some tremendous stories worth sharing," Cousins said.


As for Yarbrough, he'd be down to read up on Kris Boyd, Jalyn Holmes, Yannick Ngakoue or tight ends Irv Smith, Jr., and Tyler Conklin.


Mannion selected center Brett Jones, and Abdullah pondered for a moment before deciding on Minnesota native C.J. Ham and Adam Thielen, both of whom have followed unlikely paths to the NFL.