The Minnesota Vikings received 13 video games in 2022 — about 4 or 5 greater than oddsmakers anticipated. The franchise used late-game heroics and heartstopping transactions to take action and received the NFC North for the primary time since 2017.
However the playoffs arrived, and the membership flopped — at house, to make issues worse — so the primary 12 months of accountability orchestrated via new head trainer Kevin O’Connell felt somewhat sullied. The New York Giants had been the aggressor and systematically gutted the Vikings protection within the Wildcard Spherical.
On Minnesota’s ultimate offensive force, the Vikings didn’t convert a 4th and eight, as quarterback Kirk Cousins threw the ball in need of the sticks, sending many enthusiasts right into a tizzy and questioning, “does this man get it?”
The Vikings 4 Practical Choices at QB in 2023
And as the Vikings ruined an another way fancy season, no one is aware of if the entrance place of work or training team of workers is disenchanted with Cousins, who’s contractually dedicated to the franchise for yet another season.
With thriller looming about Minnesota’s inside opinion of the QB1, the Vikings have 4 reasonable choices at QB in 2023. Those are the ones.
1. Roll with Kirk Cousins
Love him, hate him, or detached — this will have to be thought to be the in all probability choice. It doesn’t need to imply the Vikings are enamored with Cousins for the longer term, however it does imply the person has a no-trade clause. It’s as much as Cousins if he’s the QB1 in 2023, basically since the cap penalty to unlock him — the Vikings wouldn’t do this anyway — is simply too dire.
This course would contain letting Cousins’ contract play out — it expires on the finish of 2023 — or slapping the normal further 12 months or two at the deal this offseason. The Vikings have selected the latter in back-to-back offseasons. Including any extra time onto Cousins’ present contract would sign the staff nonetheless believes in a Tremendous Bowl window with the 34-year-old.
If common supervisor Kwesi Adofo-Mensah “does not anything” with the contract, it’ll imply Cousins is a) Taking part in for his activity in 2024 – or – b) Current in his ultimate 12 months with the Vikings.
It’s uncommon for a person with 4,000+ passing yards and 30+ touchdowns consistent with 12 months to play at the ultimate 12 months of his contract.
Once more — that is the in all probability choice, because the Vikings appear to experience Cousins’ frame of labor.
2. Draft the Successor / Stay Cousins
That is the 2017 Kansas Town Chiefs approach.
Whilst it’s wildly not likely the Vikings “draft their Mahomes” — mainly as a result of the ones don’t develop on bushes — they may be able to definitely take a look at. Right here, you’d fake Cousins is Alex Smith, and the hypothetical subsequent man is, smartly, Mahomes.
Without or with an additional 12 months added directly to Cousins’ contract, Adofo-Mensah selects his inheritor obvious to Cousins — regardless of the spherical within the draft — and that human sits at the back of Cousins for a minimum of 365 days to observe and expand. The Chiefs did this in 2017 — and growth — it emphatically labored.
The one “downside” this is that Adofo-Mensah will have to get the best man in April and no longer some half-buttocks resolution like Kellen Mond.
This selection merges each worlds and will have to unite pro-Kirk and anti-Kirk fan factions — and everybody in between.
3. Industry Cousins / Draft Successor / Bridge with Mullens
It will get highly spiced right here.
Cousins, fundamental, can be requested to waive his no-trade clause. This is able to be a demand proper off the bat, and the plan will depend on Cousins’ willingness to go away Minneapolis.
Then, the Vikings may just commerce Cousins to a staff just like the New England Patriots, New York Jets, or Tampa Bay Buccaneers (if Tom Brady leaves) — groups that surmise they’re a tight quarterback clear of playoff rivalry.
The Vikings would obtain some form of noteworthy draft capital within the deal. Adofo-Mensah would use that select, the twenty third total variety, and most certainly one thing juicy for subsequent 12 months’s draft bag to transport up in Spherical 1 of the 2023 NFL Draft to make a choice Will Levis, C.J. Stroud, and many others.
The wildcard right here isn’t figuring out Adofo-Mensah’s ideas in this 12 months’s quarterback magnificence.
Oh, and on this situation, present QB2 Nick Mullens would most likely patch over the rookie quarterback. See: Mitchell Trubisky into Kenny Pickett in Pittsburgh a couple of months in the past.
4. The Trey Lance Display
After all, name the San Francisco 49ers, a staff Adofo-Mensah labored for from 2013 to 2019.
The 49ers may need to stay Brock Purdy at QB1 in 2023, particularly in the event that they succeed in or win the Tremendous Bowl. A training team of workers may just no longer inform Purday “adios” after a Tremendous Bowl look. It’d be gridiron malpractice.
Smartly, Trey Lance, who used to be intended to be San Francisco’s savior, can be a lame duck. Or if he weren’t, quarterback controversy would ensue at Purdy’s first semblance of struggles in 2023.
Adofo-Mensah may just peel Lance — who’s from Minnesota — clear of his previous employer for an undetermined commerce value. Lance may just get started right away or sit down at the back of Cousins for a 12 months.
One could be tempted to assume Lance to Minnesota is poppycock, but when the 49ers need to salvage one of the commerce capital used to obtain him two years in the past, he’d have to head someplace. And the Vikings can be on the best of the theoretical listing.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the College of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his day-to-day YouTube Channel, VikesNow. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs each Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sal Spice. His Vikings obsession dates again to 1996. Indexed in charge pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ and The Doorways (the band).
All statistics supplied via Professional Soccer Reference / Stathead; all contractual knowledge supplied via OverTheCap.com.
