Last season, the Minnesota Vikings were proactive before the trade deadline. They plucked T.J. Hockenson from the Detroit Lions, pulling off a lower stakes version of the deal that sent Stefon Diggs to the Buffalo Bills in exchange for a draft pick that became Justin Jefferson.
Minnesota got a tight end who expanded its passing offense and contributed steadily to a 13-win campaign. The Lions got a second-round pick who helped them clear space to select Sam LaPorta on Day 2 of the 2023 NFL Draft. Everyone won.
Now it’s time for the Vikings to embrace the Lions’ side of that deal. It’s time to swap veteran contributors for the risk and promise of future draft picks.
The reigning NFC North champions are 1-4, four full games behind the division-leading Lions. They’ll be without Jefferson, their perennial All-Pro wideout, for at least four games thanks to a hamstring injury. Their defense, punching above its weight class behind coordinator Brian Flores’ aggressive attack, still ranks 21st in overall efficiency and has given up at least 27 points in three of its last four games.
Their playoff odds, as it stands, lie roughly at one in eight:
Updated Playoff Probabilities based on Week 5 results (Before MNF) pic.twitter.com/D5wWbdfTiy
— SumerSports (@SumerSports) October 9, 2023
Minnesota will stabilize even without Jefferson. Its terrible turnover luck will regress back toward the norm. The next seven weeks promise three games against current one-win teams (the Denver Broncos and a home-and-home against the Chicago Bears) and the dessicating husk of the Green Bay Packers. There’s an opportunity to turn what’s been a terrible season into a mediocre one.
Who does that serve? The Vikings have four voidable years remaining on Kirk Cousins’ contract and can designate him a post-July 1 release while taking on only $10 million in dead salary cap space (…”only”). The team’s estimated $38 million in functional cap space for 2024, per Over The Cap, is a middle-of-the-pack figure, suggesting only limited help can arrive via free agency. Minnesota can re-up Cousins and wade into battle with rusty armor and a dulled blade once more, or finally admit there was a ceiling to this whole experiment and start from scratch.
If the Vikings are starting over, they’d be best served with all the draft picks they can accrue. That means the phone lines will have to be busy in advance of the league’s October 31 trade deadline. Untouchables persist, obviously. Jefferson is a non-starter, as are Hockenson and Jordan Addison. Anyone still on an inexpensive rookie contract should get an extra look, even if they’ve been frustrating prospects like Lewis Cine or Andrew Booth (of course, if the price is right they’re fair game as well).
Otherwise? It’s time to hear some offers. Did Zach Wilson just biff a game for the New York Jets? Let’s see if they’d want Cousins.
Do the Dallas Cowboys feel the need to beef up their safety rotation after getting torched by the San Francisco 49ers? How would they feel about Harrison Smith?
Danielle Hunter trade rumors swirled throughout the offseason. Now he’s a pending free agent with six sacks in five games and would be welcome just about anywhere.
This not only would boost Minnesota’s draft chest without sacrificing foundational talent, but help push this team higher up the draft board where a talented crop of quarterbacks await. The Vikings pythagorean record — a measure of where their wins and losses would be expected to be based on their point totals — pegs them at 2.2 expected wins so far. Over the course of 17 games, that puts that at either 7-10 or 8-9, where they’d probably be expected to draft between 10th and 15th selections.
You can find a useful quarterback there, but you probably won’t. Here are the last five passers to be taken between those picks:
- Justin Fields, Chicago Bears (11th pick)
- Mac Jones, New England Patriots (15th)
- Dwayne Haskins, Washington Football Team (15th)
- Josh Rosen, Arizona Cardinals (10th)
- Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs (10th)
Right. Other than Mahomes and maayyybe Fields, that’s a grim lineup. The success rate of finding a franchise quarterback is significantly higher inside the top five picks, but you won’t get there with a seven-win season unless you’re willing to mortgage a boatload of future picks — see the Bears’ trade with the Carolina Panthers from last spring as proof.
The Vikings can increase their odds of landing an envious draft spot AND load up on tradeable picks by selling before the trade deadline. All it would cost them is a little dignity — Minnesota hasn’t won fewer than seven games in a decade — and some goodwill with the fans. The outcome wouldn’t be pretty, but it would have the silver lining of a future whose potential could be greater (or worse) than the franchise’s current place in stasis.
This isn’t what the Vikings wanted to hear. Tanking sucks, and it especially sucks when you’re coming off a 13-win season that left plenty to prove. But the fact of the matter remains this team is 1-4 and will now be without its best player for the foreseeable future. The best case scenario is mediocrity, and that sucks too; just in a way that’s significantly less fun to complain about.
So, here stands Minnesota. The football gods have violently swung against the team after being on your side throughout the 2022 regular season. Things aren’t as bad as a 1-4 record suggests, but with a little work, they could be.
And that’s where the Vikings want to be headed into 2024.