A lot of discussions have been occurring over the last few months about the direction of the Minnesota Vikings. They have seen a lot of roster turnover with veterans leaving the team, including Adam Thielen, Eric Kendricks and Dalvin Cook.
With Danielle Hunter potentially the next one to leave the Vikings, the word “rebuild” has been thrown around by quite a few people in both article and tweet form. Here’s the thing: Even if they move on from Hunter, that doesn’t mean the direction of the team is any different.
The Vikings are not rebuilding, nor will they under Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
The failure of the front office under Adofo-Mensah would be the reason Hunter could eventually be traded prior to the start of the 2023 season. That also doesn’t mean that the Vikings are rebuilding. That word is used when talking about teams like the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears, but that’s not the Vikings.
Adofo-Mensah said so himself that the Vikings weren’t rebuilding in one of his first press conferences back on March 23, 2022.
“We’re all aligned on what our vision is and how we see the needs of our team this year, next year and overall our whole time horizon,” Adofo-Mensah said. “I think when people look at teams they sometimes do it in a very binary way. And they ask, ‘Are you either all-in or tearing down and rebuilding?’ And I don’t really look at the world that way. The way we look at it is we’re trying to navigate both worlds, we’re trying to live in today and tomorrow, or the competitive rebuild, however you want to phrase it or market it, and so I think that’s kind of how we’ve approached this offseason and our time horizons going forward.”
Competitive rebuild is something that you have heard a considerable amount over the last 18 months. The idea behind it is to do what a lot of teams want to be able to do: stay competitive while turning over your roster.
This is something that the Wilf’s want with the Vikings. They want a team that is competitive year in and year out. It’s good for both business and fan interest. While tearing things down like the Bears have done can work long-term, that can lose a lot of fan interest, and in turn, money.
Moving on from Hunter doesn’t signal a rebuild. It only signals a failure in how they handled things with his contract. Do they need to replace him on the roster and in the starting lineup? Absolutely! A rebuild? Far from it.