Adam Thielen did not let fumble vs. Cowboys in '16 break him
The Vikings' wide receiver explained the mindset that helped him overcome a major miscue vs. Dallas in 2016
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN/MINNEAPOLIS — On December 1, 2016, the Minnesota Vikings desperately needed a win to get their season back on track.
The Vikings entered the game having seen a 5-0 start to the season slip to 6-5 after a gut-wrenching loss to the Detroit Lions the previous week. They had an opportunity to beat an 11-1 Dallas Cowboys team that was driven by rookie quarterback Dak Prescott. They were looking to give themselves a major boost toward the postseason.
A victory that night also would have carried extra juice for the Vikings because they were without head coach Mike Zimmer, who was undergoing emergency eye surgery. With the national TV spotlight on, it had all of the makings of a turning-point game.
And deep into the contest, the Vikings were on track to make it just that. While Zimmer watched from home, his defense gobbled up Dallas’s running game and held Prescott in check. Early in the fourth quarter, Kai Forbath kicked a field goal to give the Vikings a 9-7 lead and then the Vikings’ defense picked up a key third-down stop minutes later.
They needed one more drive to go up by two scores and drain the clock and the Cowboys were punting the ball back.
But disaster struck. Receiver Adam Thielen, in the midst of his breakout season, received the punt, broke to his left looking for a seam and had the ball stripped out of his hands. Dallas recovered and scored a touchdown seconds later to take a 14-9 lead.
It ended up being the difference in the game. Sam Bradford led a last second drive to give the Vikings a chance to win but his two-point pass fell incomplete and they lost by two.
The following week, Thielen picked up 101 yards receiving against the Jaguars. After getting hurt against the Colts, he came back for 202 yards on 12 receptions at Lambeau Field.
The rest is history. He has since made two Pro Bowls and scored the third most touchdowns in the NFL last year and presently ranks eighth in touchdown receptions heading into another season-on-the-line type game against the Cowboys on national TV at US Bank Stadium on Sunday night.
How was Thielen able to put his costly mistake aside and bounce back quickly? How does he use mistakes as a driving force behind his success? We got together with him to find out…
Matthew Coller: Adam, when you look back at that fumble against the Cowboys in 2016, it has to be crushing when that happens and Dallas scores instantly. How do you deal with that in the moment?
Adam Thielen: One side of it is that you’ve been through that so many times. The more years you play in the NFL, you think back to college, high school, I don’t care who you are or how good of a player you are, you make mistakes and you have some amazing plays and you have some not-so amazing. There’s been points throughout my career at any level where you have those tough plays to lose a game or a big part of a game and you use that as experience and you say, ‘OK I’ve been here before and I’ve overcome it, that doesn’t define me. One bad play doesn’t define who I am or what kind of player I am or what kind of game I’m having.’
I’ve always been the type of person that, yes, it makes me extremely angry and I think about it but I want to move on and try to make up for it. Just go to that next play and say, ‘I’m going to make up for this. I’m going to get another opportunity and I’m going to make that play.’
I know I said this in a press conference after the Saints [playoff] game when I fumbled on maybe the first or second play of the game, I remember going to the sideline and saying, ‘Flush it, actually push it down the toilet, flush it.’ I learned that in college. Coach was like, ‘Flush it, it doesn’t matter, you have to be ready for the next play, if you start dwelling on what you did before you’re not going to be able to perform your best.’
Coller: I remember you talking for a long time with the media after the game. Since it was an NFL Network game, there was a ton of media there for that one and you answered all the questions. Why did you decide to handle it that way?
Thielen: Accountability. Just saying, ‘Hey, I feel bad for my teammates, I know I messed up and it was a big play in that game that changed momentum of the game.’ You have to take accountability, as much as you don’t want to, as much as you just want to move on, you have to take accountability, I think that’s important in any game. If you lose, you have to look at yourself in the mirror first and think about ways that you could have played better and done things to help your team win. That’s always been my mindset, as tough as that is sometimes. You have to talk to yourself and say, ‘I don’t care what happened in this game you have to take accountability.’
Coller: I’ve covered players along the way who never recover from a big mistake in a game. They lose confidence and never seem to bounce back. How did you avoid having it linger?
Thielen: The natural thing is, even now in my career, is to get down on yourself. Even in practice, if I have a drop or something, even now the first natural instinct is to get down and go into your shell and be frustrated. But you know where that takes you as an athlete. You know what kind of mindset you have to have to perform well. You have to get that out of your mind ASAP.
You have to say, ‘Screw it, let’s go, I’m going to make the next one.’ You’ve gotta talk to yourself, find a way to get positive again and not go into that shell. You learn that, naturally you’re going to go there, no matter how much you talk about going on to the next play. Naturally you’re going to go to that tough spot, that dark place. It’s about how fast you can switch that mindset back to being positive and excited and confident.
Coller: I’ve noticed in the years since then, you have referenced on a number of occasions talking to other players when they have things to wrong and using your mistakes as an example. Even earlier this year, you talked about that with Greg Joseph when he missed the kick against Arizona. How have you used plays like the fumble against the Cowboys to help others, especially younger players?
Thielen: That’s always been a major point from me to help these young guys. If they do something, I can go to them with experience.
Talking to someone in the preseason, I told them that I remember having a game in preseason my second year and it was my make-or-break, I was on practice squad before and I wanted to make the 53-man roster. Playing against Tampa Bay, I had a route in the back of the end zone and I should have caught it. It kind of bounced off my hands. It wasn’t an easy catch but it wasn’t a hard catch and I dropped it. I use that as an example. I had tough plays early in my career. I made plays that I thought I was going to get cut after that but you come back to work the next day and you find a way to get better and work on those things.
That particular catch, I still work on that catch every single day after practice. That’s another example of using some of those failures to say, ‘Maybe I need to get some extra reps of this to make me feel comfortable catching it like this.’ I always try to use examples for guys, personal examples, so it’s not just me talking.
Coller: I still think about errors from Little League now and then. Do plays like that still haunt you?
Thielen: There’s so many plays like that I’ll remember and I’ll never forget. I can remember the exact situation, the exact spot on the field. Even the Carolina game, the last time we played there I had the exact same spot in the end zone, the exact same route and I dropped it. I can remember exactly where it was on that field. But there are big plays and great catches that I don’t even remember.
Those plays will always stick in the back of my mind. I can remember all the way back to college and high school the plays that I dropped. I remember fumbling in college in overtime. It’s crazy how you remember those tough plays but the big ones you don’t.
Coller: So do you remember taking that Dallas drop and turning it into big games down the stretch? The final few games of that season ended up being where you put an exclamation point on a prove-it year.
Thielen: Any time that I have a tough game or a couple of games in a row, it’s like, ‘Alright, it’s time to turn it on.’ You nip it in the bud as soon as possible. If you have a game where you felt like you didn’t do your best, that next week of practice is going to be the best week of practice you ever had. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be perfect but the attention to detail, the work ethic. I always look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘I’ve gotta go hard this week. I have to go as hard as I possibly can, I don’t care what happens. I don’t care if I drop a ball.’ That’s the mindset I have.
It kind of pissed me off [to fumble against the Cowboys] and when it pisses me off, I make sure I work harder. That helps you going into that next game. I put in the work this week, I’m prepared, I don’t really care what happens. If I make a mistake, it is what it is because I know I prepared and I did everything I could to help this team win.
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Fantastic article Mathew
Enjoyed this! Life lessons man, life lessons. I’m going to share it with my junior high athlete and college sophomore!