Heading into the 2020 season, the Minnesota Vikings and their front office are going to have a lot of tough decisions to make. There are decisions to be made from a coaching standpoint, positional standpoint and contractual standpoint, so there is no doubt that the Vikings will have a lot of moving pieces throughout the 2020 offseason.
There has been chatter that the Vikings have interest in extending both Kirk Cousins and Dalvin Cook, but the pen is yet to meet the paper on either those contracts. Both extensions have certainly been earned, with each of them making a strong case for MVP of the Vikings offense.
Extending Cook seems like the right move, but there would still be concerns with signing the 24-year-old running back. Cook is coming off his best season as a pro, but an injury prone past needs to be taken into consideration when negotiating an extension at the running back position.
Cousins is coming off yet another good statistical season, and proved that he is more than capable of leading his team in big moments.
The former highest-paid quarterback in the NFL took a huge leap forward with his playoff win over the Saints. The narrative of Cousins not being able to win a big game was finally shut down, and it should have been enough for him to get a contract extension.
Even though Cousins is probably in line to get an extension, that doesn’t change the fact that the Vikings should invest a draft pick into the quarterback position. Whether or not Cousins is the quarterback of the future for the Vikings, there are still multiple reasons they need to draft a quarterback.
First and foremost, Sean Mannion is not the answer to the Vikings backup quarterback position. It would make much more sense to invest in a rookie quarterback that the team can try and groom into a future starter.
Over the years, the Vikings have struggled at drafting quarterbacks. It looked as if the team had found their guy in Teddy Bridgewater, until he went down with a gruesome knee injury in 2016.
Looking at the Vikings roster, the team is littered with talent across the board. Rick Spielman and the scouting team has done a phenomenal job at bringing in talent on each day of the draft, but the quarterback position has been a tough one in terms of home grown talent.
After another solid year, it seems as if the Vikings have found their new franchise quarterback in Cousins. The 31-year-old has shown that he still has multiple seasons left as a starter in this league, so the timing is perfect to draft a young quarterback.
It might seem like an odd time to use draft capital on a quarterback, but in all reality the timing is perfect. The Vikings have had some of the best quarterback play in years with Cousins under center, so drafting a quarterback and letting him learn underneath him would be beneficial to all parties.
Cousins has performed well over the last two seasons, but his style of play lacks a trait that many of the young stars have. Mobility at the quarterback position has proven to be an important aspect in some of the newer franchise quarterbacks. In a situation where the offensive line hasn’t been great, finding a mobile quarterback could be beneficial to the Vikings in the long run.
If the Vikings want to take the mobility route, they could wait until the middle rounds and give a guy like Jalen Hurts of Oklahoma a chance to come and learn behind Cousins.
It’s never a bad time to draft a quarterback, and three of the four quarterbacks that played on championship Sunday are proof of that statement. Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes and Jimmy Garoppolo were all drafted to be successors to other quarterbacks, and two of the three are meeting for the Lombardi Trophy in two weeks.
Another piece of information worth noting is who the quarterbacks were when these three were drafted. Brett Favre, Tom Brady and Alex Smith were the three starters at the time of Rodgers, Garoppolo and Mahomes being drafted.
Two first ballot Hall of Famers and a statistical above average quarterback were all still playing playoff worthy football at the time of their successors being drafted. This proves that there is never a bad time to draft a quarterback, even if the team already has an above average to Hall of Fame worthy quarterback.
All of this information can be taken with a grain of salt, because no GM would know if the next quarterback they draft will be on the same level as Rodgers and Mahomes. But the point of this is to show that without taking that risk, one would never know what lies ahead.
There are many talented quarterbacks in the 2020 draft class, but there’s a good chance that the majority of them will never be as good as Cousins. Names like Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa sit among the top of most draft boards, but it is impossible without a trade that the Vikings would have a chance at drafting either of them.
Since the Vikings are drafting with pick 25, it begs the question as to what would be available for them. Of the quarterbacks listed above, Mahomes was taken the earliest of the three with the 10th overall pick. Rodgers was passed on by the 49ers for Alex Smith, and he fell to the 24th overall pick and sat behind Favre for a few years. Garoppolo is representing the NFC in the Super Bowl, and he wasn’t taken until the end of the second round. Not only was he taken in the second round, but he was taken to sit behind the best quarterback of all time, who was drafted with the 199th pick.
Drafting a quarterback is one of the hardest things to do in the NFL. Some teams hit the lottery on a guy like Mahomes, where others have to sit in disbelief knowing their team drafted Mitchell Trubisky instead.
Cousins has done enough to gain himself extension talks through his first two seasons with the Vikings, but that shouldn’t stop the Vikings from going after a quarterback at some point in the draft. Whether or not they’re willing to trade up for someone, or if they take a chance on a guy like Jordan Love out of Utah State, the Vikings need to start looking Cousins successor.