NEW ORLEANS — Wearing a dark suit and wheeling a black suitcase, Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins strode across the field at the Superdome late Sunday afternoon. On the surface, the previous few hours seemed likely to rank among the most meaningful of his life.
In the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs, Cousins and the Vikings made the trip to one of the loudest stadiums in pro football, where most pundits expected them to lose by double digits, where oddsmakers had made them eight-point underdogs. Minnesota had taken a 10-point lead, lost it and gone to overtime. And they had triumphed, 26-20, against a Saints team that won 13 games this season, against a hostile crowd, against Drew Brees and Sean Payton, and against the prevailing sentiment that this is exactly the kind of game that Cousins typically would lose.