Joe Mauer with the Twins against the Orioles in May 2017.

Can it really be that we’re into NFL training camps already? Does that also mean that true Minnesota Vikings fans are rising to a fevered pitch about the possibility of going to the Super Bowl?

The advance promotion of the Vikings has been fantastic, with a mountain of evidence that quarterback Kirk Cousins has finally reached that mature, experienced-veteran status that should quell the cynics and allow him to prove once and for all that he is the elite quarterback his lofty contract terms should demand.

That and the arrival of new wide receiver Jordan Addison have fanned the flames of optimism to what we can call normal heights of unrealistic hope. Addison arrived at camp in a blur, but not because he is such a fast receiver.

No, it’s because he will never outlive the absurd reputation he gained by coming out of Southern Cal and buying an exotic Lamborghini sports car. He then ran from Minneapolis to St. Paul on Interstate 94, where the Highway Patrol clocked him at 140 miles per hour.  

Can’t blame him; if you or I got the ridiculous amount of money he got as a contract and signing bonus, we also might want to blow some of it on an exotic car like that. And we might be tempted to try it out for speed on a deserted overnight freeway.

But once caught, I’d like to think I’d offer a better excuse to the Highway Patrol than that my dog had a medical emergency. He actually offered that as justification for driving 140 mph on a public roadway, approximating the old high school cliche that “my dog ate my homework assignment.”

Addison is the key guy the Vikings got to eliminate any excuse Kirk Cousins cynics might offer that Adam Thielen had aged enough to be ineffective. We are not so stupid as to fail to recall last season when the Vikings of T.J. Hockenson.

Cousins, justifiably criticized for the inability to quickly find and hit alternative receivers, quit looking for Thielen, who remained the high-percentage ace that turned tough chances into spectacular receptions. We are all going to pull for Thielen to make a fantastic showing now with the Carolina Panthers.

The other huge move the Vikings made was to allow Dalvin Cook to walk away a free agent. Cook has been an outstanding force for the Vikings offense, gaining more than 1,000 yards virtually every year, which gave Cousins a high-profile alternative to passing the football. Other teams, envying the Vikings for having Cook, tried all sorts of running back forms, including rotating two or three in hopes they might equal one great one. Incredibly, the Vikings will no longer be envied for having such a great one and letting him get away in order to attempt to have running back by committee!

Cousins has conducted meetings and given speeches to teammates in a new move to make him more of a cherished leader. I think that’s great, but I would be more impressed if he proved he could work on quick-foot drills that would allow him to dance away from fierce opposing rushers. Then he could work on finding alternate receivers when Jefferson is double-covered.

Fortunately for the Vikings, they play in a woefully inept division of the NFL where they are almost guaranteed the title. But I believe a team like the Detroit Lions might emerge as division winner, rising from a creative offense, a strong quarterback in Justin Goff, and the opportunity to reward all those truly loyal fans in the Motor City.

Chicago also could be a real challenger, with Justin Fields about to provide true excitement as well as points at quarterback. It could be a great race, but it also could mean the Vikings, without Cook and Thielen but still with Cousins, could drop and fight it out with the Aaron Rodgers-less Green Bay Packers.

Twins honor Joe Mauer  

As diehard sports fans in the Great White North, we Minnesotans don’t have to have a championship-winning team to offer our wholehearted support. Good thing. The Minnesota Twins have disappointed us for a lot of years, pretending to be contenders before ultimately falling back to being, simply, pretenders. They will try to rekindle the cynics on Saturday when they bring back the retired Joe Mauer and honor him by putting him into the team’s Hall of Fame at Target Field.

Mauer was always a fan favorite, both because he was a hometown guy from St. Paul Cretin-Derham Hall, and because he was the best-hitting catcher on the planet, with American League batting titles and a more than-.300 average, as well as a solid defensive play. He preceded the analytics that have dragged down the instinctive great play to the level of formula performance, and he is a certain baseball Hall of Fame pick on the first ballot.

The Twins appear to be following the same procedure this season, being consistent in their inconsistency, which is excellent for column-writers and cynics who can depend on alternate story ideas almost by the week. The Twins surged to a commanding hold on first place in the comfortably weak Central Division by winning 6 out of 7 games to leave Cleveland 4 games behind as the only more than-.500 team — then they immediately sagged into a 5-game losing streak, practically begging columnists to rip them for being unable to hit enough and to relief pitch under pressure.

The Twins lost their final two games of last week’s homestead, 9-7 and 8-7 to Seattle, before going to Kansas City, where the Royals are a team the Twins had beaten in 8 of their past 9 meetings. The Royals, who had never this season won three games in a row or swept a series, swept all three games from the Twins by counts of 8-5, 10-7 and 2-1. If you examine the 5-game losing streak, the Twins scored 27 runs, an average of over 5 runs per game. T

hat should be enough for a pitching-rich Twins team, instead of the recipe for a 5-game skid, which they then took to St. Louis. In the first two games at Kansas City, the Twins turned Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. into a superstar. The Twins couldn’t stop Witt, a quick, young defensive shortstop who resembles a young Carlos Correa, and he is hitting .263 for the season.

Consider that in the 8-5 win, Witt went 4-for-5 with a home run and a double, scoring two runs and driving in 6, with the final 4 RBIs coming in the last of te 10th inning as a grand slam to erase a 5-4 Twins lead. The next day, in the 10-7 win, Witt went 4-for-5 again, with a home run and a triple, scoring 2 runs and driving in 3. Even fading to a 1-for-4 day Sunday, Witt left the series and the Twins pitching staff dazzled by a 9-for-12 performance.

Maybe inducting Joe Mauer into the Twins Hall of Fame Saturday can revive the flagging Twins prospects for this season. After all, he was the picture of consistency, with the ability to take two strikes and then calmly stroke a line drive to the opposite field to ignite a rally or win a game.