VIKINGS SET TO BEGIN A NEW ERA
Written by Tony Schultz on March 15, 2024
If there is one constant in the NFL is that there will always be change. Players and coaches move from one team to another, or they retire from a successful or moderate career. There are two factors to watch in any team sport: individual success and team success. They are separate, but can affect one another to varying degrees. If the majority of players play well then the team will do well. If the team, which includes coaches and owners do not make good decisions then the players may suffer. It seems simple to get the best players so you have the best team. What we have seen more often though is that you usually need one or two phenomenal players on that team to take them to a championship season. The Vikings have been trying to find this formula since …. well, since 1961. At least a season where they win the Super Bowl. They’ve been four times, but that was in the 1960s and 1970s. They’ve had great players and coaches and been close to going back, but luck, injuries, poor coaching decisions, and bad play at the wrong time have all derailed seasons where the team could have gone to and won the big game. The Vikings are one of the winningest teams in the NFL without a Super Bowl. In 2017 the team was on a tear with Case Keenum at the quarterback position having a remarkable and surprising year and was one game away before he got exposed by the eventual champion Philadelphia Eagles. Thus began the search for a new quarterback that the organization felt would put them over the top, and that quarterback was Kirk Cousins.
Cousins had all the stats a player at his position should have when it came to passing yards, touchdowns, and low interceptions. The feeling was he was stuck on a poorly run Washington team and had a weak supporting cast of offensive players or a poorly run defense. Bringing him to Minnesota with a strength on both sides of the ball should give him even greater success. For the most part it did. I’m not going to break down every year and stat, but he was consistently a good to great quarterback for the team. New in 2022, Head Coach Kevin O’Connell really helped Kirk play better and put a better system around him. That season he led the team to several game winning comebacks including a historic one against the Colts. The 2022 defense was atrocious to say the least due to having a bad coordinator in Ed Donatell. 2023 was shaping up to be different. Brian Flores had taken over the defense, even though the talent level was less than the year before and Kirk was getting his second year in the offense. Adding wide receiver Jordan Addison alongside Justin Jefferson and tight end TJ Hockenson gave him three topflight receiving options. It finally looked like the year that Cousins and the team would flourish. Unfortunately, about the time Kirk was lighting up defenses and in the MVP conversation and the defense was making an impact he tore the Achilles in his right foot. The season derailed and it put into question whether he would re-sign with the team at the end of the year. The answer to that was: no. Whether you like Kirk Cousins or not doesn’t matter much to me, but you can’t deny what a great player he is. While he’s not an elite quarterback like Patrick Mahomes he has always been in that next tier. Now that he’s taken his talents to Atlanta the Vikings are faced with the unknown that teams revel in and fear at the same time: drafting their next franchise quarterback.
Pick the right guy and fans love you. Pick a bust and everyone is probably out of a job. Whenever a new player takes over the position of quarterback and is seen as a franchise player there is a lot of excitement in the air. This year there are potentially six quarterbacks with the resumes that NFL teams covet in the mix to be drafted. Three of them – Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, and Drake Maye are considered “can’t miss” prospects while JJ McCarthy, Michael Penix Jr, and Bo Nix are considered great players with some question marks, or maybe even red flags for teams. The Vikings have the 11th overall pick which most think keeps them from organically drafting one of the top three or four options, and they would need to make a trade to get ahead of other teams looking to draft a quarterback. On Friday they traded up from the second round into the first round with the Houston Texans and now also hold the 23rd pick in the first round. These two picks may be enough to move up into the top 3 picks of the first round. The risks and rewards are extreme in this moment. If they trade up and get a guy that is a franchise quarterback for the next ten years then they’re geniuses. If he’s a bust they all lose their jobs and fans will lose their minds. The same is true if they stay put or trade back. It gets even worse if a guy that gets drafted after all the “can’t miss guys” plays much better than all of them. For past reference look up Russell Wilson. In the 2024 draft it could be Spencer Rattler. No matter what, the Vikings need to come out of this draft with one of these players and fans have no problem with them trading up to secure “their guy”. That means trading current and future draft picks or possibly even players with high end performance. With the players already in place on the team a rookie quarterback would have plenty to work with to have a chance at success. If everything goes right the mantra of “wait until next year” may actually be worth it, and it could go down in the good side of the history books. Pick the wrong guy and it becomes a point of infamy in the lore of a team that just can’t get everything right in the same year. With the recent trade today, fans are immediately feeling good and willing to accept the risk the team might take to move up to get the guy that could get the championship that has eluded the team for decades. The new era has started, and we will have a few years to see how it ends.
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