Since Kirk Cousins' signing the veteran QB has played well but it hasn't resulted in a deep playoff run and the road to changing that is difficult without cap space
This article really lays out why this season cannot be viewed as a success. Based on their decisions this off season they acted like they were a contender. Losing in the first round to the 6 seed means that they were wrong with that evaluation.
I think the most likely outcome for the 2023 season is Coller's "natural tank". I don't think they will go full rebuild, but will try again to keep the aging roster together as much as possible and age /bad breaks finally catch up with them. My biggest worry is that they extend Cousins only for cap savings just to fit in Jefferson's extension. We will really see this off season if Kwesi is going to repeat the mistakes of the Spielman era.
Your last sentence is the key. It doesn't make sense to pay players who aren't making game-changing plays. We know what the previous administration did; we'll see if there is a course-correction this off-season.
They were outscored on the season and in the basement on yards and points allowed: with this coaching/roster it was not a contender. Losing to the Jints was irksome, but did that loss tell us anything we didn't already know?
Thanks Eric. Reality hurts but since Ziggy and Mark have owned the team it's always been good but not good enough. And the one playoff win could've been a loss very easily Rudolph also could've been called for PI. Always good to read your written work and when you've did a podcast with Matt.
Money, money, money... The Vikes need to do some major housecleaning ($$$) for a bright future. If we could trade Cousins (with his permission) for a few decent draft picks, I say do it. We need to rebuild and it will be painful. The big question is will the Wilf's allow it?
He has no trade value unless we eat a lot of cap that we don't have. I would guess a fourth rounder as is. He is Amari Cooper. He was an 1100 yard receiver for a 5th rounder because it was a bad contract.
Having all the QB trades from last year blow up in teams faces definitely hurts his value also. But teams get weird about QBs. If Brady retires and Rogers stays put then teams like the Jets and Raiders who think they have good rosters but no QBs may get desperate. After this season I think you could get at least what ATL did for Matt Ryan last year, which was a 3rd.
There I think you are extremely wrong. In the end teams that think they are a QB away will pay up and Cousins was generally very good this year. You do not win so many close games without a QB with balls of steel. That said as Olddrummer said the decision (which longer term would be correct) to blow up the roster lies with the Wilfs and not Kwesi.)
I think it was reported that the going rate for Kirk was a 3rd rounder from Indy. Even in a really bad QB draft year it was a 3rd. If it had been a 1st rounder he would have been gone. I think it’s less than a 3rd rounder this year. Contract isn’t any better and he was good not great. The draft is a much more viable option for more teams this year. I’m not a hater. He would have done MUCH better than Matt Ryan but he’s no better trade bait 1 year later.
Nah his contract is way better this year than it was last year for trading.
Last year if we traded him the team acquiring him would have had to pay Kirk 45MM in 2022. Of course at that point the team taking him on wouldn't be interested. The Vikes could have converted some of that into a signing bonus to give him a more palatable salary for the acquiring team, but at that point the Vikes are going to be less inclined to trade him because they have to pay him to go away.
Conversely, this year a team taking Cousins on would "only" have to pay him 30MM this year, and could move on for him for free after the year. That is a far more palatable option (would rank 12th for 2023 cap hit among QBs just below Goff).
I do not remember that report at all. And again, it comes down to situation. A team in a rebuild or far away should not think about it.. But a team like the Jets (very good team with a crappy QB) he could be an excellent fit . And Cousins is still younger than Ryan and in many ways looked vg (not great). And you are totally WRONG about if it was a first rounder he would have been gone. Not saying that Kwesi would not have done it, the Wilfs would not have allowed it. Pretty simple. Cousins was not going to be traded last year (ok, if a similar haul to what the Seahawks got for Wilson then maybe, but realistically the Wilfs wanted to run it back)
I generally agree with this article.. I do think this is overstated
> Garrett Bradbury, Ezra Cleveland, Wyatt Davis and Ed Ingram, all players who have flopped.
Bradbury was certainly over drafted (ie we spent too much capital on him), Cleveland has been acceptable and Ingram we only have his rookie year (a lot of OLs bloom late so just looking at his rookie year and calling him a flop is just lazy analysis)
That said, this is the perfect year to flop
1. Obviously dead money will hurt 2023 but lets clean up the crap.
2. We face a tough schedule and also 9 away games. We will not be doing well anyway.
3. We have some very solid young pieces (and maybe more as we really do not know what we have in Cine, Booth, Evans, Nailor yes, they might all be worth nothing but maybe they will be pretty good with some seasoning and health) . Asamoah looks like a starter from his limited reps
Again, the decision rests with the WIlfs. That simple. We can criticize Kwesi on the execution of a competitive rebuild but the mandate was from the Wilfs
-As you said, Cleveland would not be a problem at all if we had better OL play on the other interior spots or a QB that was less intensely susceptible to interior pressure, and Bradbury has shown that can also be a worthwhile NFL player. Listing all of those as unequivocal flops is a bit lazy.
-This was my first time looking at the 2023 opponents. Woof. Some teams we know will be brutal like the Chiefs, Niners, Bengals, Eagles, and then a few other teams that underperformed but could have bounce-back seasons such as the Chargers and Broncos. I expect that the Falcons, Bucs, and Saints might all be floundering, but the Panthers actually are building something and might be dangerous. Raiders are a complete wild card to me. When you combine that with the Lions looking competent and the Packers figuring out some WRs to end the year, and I am guessing that we will be leading Bill Barnwell's article about regression candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if Vegas gives us the same win total next year as we had this year despite the better record.
- Agreed with our good pieces, especially on offense. A lot of teams would be delighted to take a foundation of JJ, Hock, Darrisaw, and O'Neill, with other interesting pieces sprinkled throughout. Defense is more tricky to spot foundational pieces, but recent history has shown that it is more important to build on offense anyway.
- Beyond that, I am less absolutely convinced that it was the Wilfs and the Wilfs alone that is pulling the strings. I do think that it is logical to assume that, especially given how little has changed going from Rick to Kwesi, but certainly Kwesi has said nothing to indicate that he is powerless to have the Vikings turn the page.
Allowing Ed Donatell to enter the Stadium was the reason they lost. Wide receivers running wide open all over the middle of the field never should have happened. That game should have been 24-7 Vikings but for the defensive scheme. Never should have come down to 4th and 8. Vikings should have won that one going away. Keep the offense mostly as is, replace the Defensive coordinator, add an o lineman, 3 quality defensive backs and a 1 d lineman in the draft or through free agency and LETS GO!
Eric's not wrong but it's way more than just Cousins. Dropping him is just the easiest fix. Barr's cap hit was $10M this year. That was a debacle of a signing. We paid an RB. Is Cook worth $10M more than Mattison? We paid Michael Pierce and Sheldon Richardson and Kyle Rudolph and Jeff Gladney another $10M more. We convert salary to bonuses and push money into the future for guys. Or they have balloons at the end that make them completely untradeable. We spent a lot of money on a defense that was horrible. Dalvin Tomlinson's contract is over but we have 7.5 million more cap hit to pay. People relate to every bad cap hit as if Kirk made them do it. Almost no one not on a rookie deal is tradable for anything. They found that out before this year started.
I appreciate that it was brought up that it is the contract structure that is the ultimate problem. While an overpayment, the lack of flexibility from the short term, guaranteed nature of the deal is the real albatross that comes with Cousins.
Time to start the cleaning. Drop Kendricks and Hicks. Drop Zadarius, started great but disappeared 1/2 way through season. Drop Theilan. Drop Cook or trade if possible. That will get books much better. Let Kirk ride his contact out. Draft best DE or WR with your 1st pick, draft all D for rest. Natural tank season and pick your next QB in 2024.
Thielen is basically not worth cutting this year. You would save only 6MM while still owing him 13.5MM. It is next year that we can move on for "only" 7MM in dead cap. Incidentally, that turned into a pretty awful extension Kwesi handed out.
You could (and they probably will) drop Hicks for 5MM in cap savings, Cook for 6MM in cap savings, and Kendricks for 9.5MM in cap savings. Each of those make sense as they are at low-value positions, and those gets the Vikings to only 2MM below the salary cap. It also seems reasonable to cut Zadarius for another 13.6MM in cap savings, though DE is a high-value position so I could see keeping him (and to instead do something like extending Hunter to get under the cap).
Beyond that, I would prefer to grab our QB this year so long as the evaluations keep coming in positive on QBs. You don't want to head into an offseason with no QB on your roster that you want to keep around when the NFL has a poor QB draft. Moreover, picking at 23 is a very decent spot for either picking a QB that slides or trading up into the teens. Lots of good history on our side for picking a middle-of-the-first-round QB that we can start at our leisure.
Just don't kick the can down the road with Theilan. I'm ok going QB, but just assume at 24 your getting lower tier QB. If someone good is there, do it.
The years-long trend of kicking cap hits down the road was dumb, period. The allocation of capital (draft and $) to RBs was criminal. The run of Elflein, Cleveland, Bradbury, the serial rapist, Wyatt and Samia was staggeringly unproductive.
The easiest way to win is to have a good QB on a rookie deal. However, executing that strategy is hard and can also result in being the Bears, Jets, Browns or Cardinals. Of the 14 playoff teams, only 5 are paying QBs, but it seems pretty likely Hurts, Danny Dimes, Burrow, Herbert and Jackson (by someone) are going to get paid this offseason. Being able to competently manage a roster while paying a QB is not a big ask--it's a key part of being a GM.
Disagree that executing the strategy of winning with a rookie QB is hard, at least compared to what the Vikings have done. I mean the Bears with True Biscuit ended up with a stretch very similar to what the Vikings have had with Kirk - a single NFC North crown, two playoff appearances, one season with over 10 wins, etc. I would say the same with Cleveland with Mayfield or the Cards with Kyler, both of which had highs that were basically the same as what the Vikes have had with Kirk. The Jets are the best example of it going poorly, but frankly ATM I would almost prefer to be the Jets over the next 5 years more than the Vikes - the Jets have an elite infrastructure and are at a good spot to take whichever of the QBs slide or trade up to get whichever they prefer.
Beyond that an extension to Dimes likely wouldn't be prohibitive the way that Kirk's contract was, and an extension to Hurts, Burrow, or Herbert likely wouldn't kick in with massive money for another 2 or 3 years. We have never had such a runway with Kirk, and our roster reflects that.
Lamar Jackson seemingly wants massive money now. Not coincidentally, Lamar Jackson has not signed a contract despite being on what is widely considered one of the smartest teams in the NFL, where now there is rumblings that Lamar might not even sign with said smart team.
The key part is either finding an elite QB or making sure that you aren't paying a non-elite QB top dollar. The smart teams know this. We will see whether or not the Vikings are one of these smart teams.
It's fair to want to take a swing at upgrading. I take your point about comparable success; the only difference is those outcomes came with the benefit and risk of a cheap QB, the Vikings did so while paying market QB rates--which doesn't come with the risk of a bust.
The other relevant issue now is when Cousins will fall off a cliff. Paying for age 30-35 seasons is a different assessment than 36-38. Rusty and Matty Ice didn't exactly age like Brady.
The current roster reflects poor drafting + kicking caps hits down the road--neither of which are caused by paying a QB. With Jackson, he didn't re-sign because he hasn't been prepared to accept that the sexual predator in Cleveland's deal is an outlier. He was offered a pre-Watson market extension and passed.
Some excellent points there! My main quibble is that I don't actually think that our current roster reflects poor drafting, I would say that it reflects average drafting. The draft is a crapshoot, and even the best teams will have lots of drafts where all they get is JAGs. I mean, over the last four years the Vikings draft picks have an weighted average value (from PFR) of 318 - that is better than baltimore, buffalo, and the eagles, three teams that are widely thought of as good drafting teams. If you take this exact same team that the Vikings have right now and all you do is give it a better DC and a elite QB like Burrow, Allen, Mahomes, etc., and this team is immediately a legit contender because the recent drafting has landed enough legit stars (Jefferson, Darrisaw, O'Neill) and enough competent players (Osborn, Bynum, Ezra, Dantzler) that if they ALSO had an extra 30MM per year to spend via rookie savings that that is the difference. I mean our OL is unambiguously better than what Joe Burrow has taken to a superbowl, and how many times have we heard that the reason why we can't win with Kirk is because our OL isn't good enough?
Though, while I would argue the team has drafted a generally average number of useful players, I think they have done a very poor job of drafting for positions of value. Generally you want to use the early rounds to draft the players that are paid the most (QB, DE, WR, CB, OT), as this money indicates the scarcity of these positions and also shows how much money you can save when you are instead locked into rookie wages. Conversely, the Vikings have spent way too many high picks on safety, guard, center, ILB, which are all among the lowest paid positions. It has been frustrating to watch.
Otherwise, yes, that is what I meant with Jackson - he wanted a mega-bucks contract that didn't have a slow ramp up and wasn't team friendly, and he seeming won't take anything else.
I think the big issue with our drafting was after an amazing 2015 we whiffed from 2016-18. 2019 was mediocre with average to better than average 2020 and 21 (22 a bit too early to tell)
The weighted average is an interesting metric; it's certainly a joy to watch JJ, Darrisaw and O'Neill (who hopefully has a full recovery), but those picks can distort the number of misses/below average players. If there had been a competent DC, and one of noted-abuser-Gladney or Hughes were a league-average or better starter, that would have made a big difference defensively this year. The Vikings' drafts have been a bit boom/bust, which of course means stars + a lack of depth. Agreed, drafting is hard and it's not as if, e.g., Mickey Loomis has had anything like his 2017 draft before or since, and there has been a general lack of understanding positional value, both with draft capital and second/third contracts.
The issue with Jackson is the guarantees, not the cap hit. The year-over-year cap hits don't change based upon later years' salaries being guaranteed. It's a little nuts that the players in the other big 4 sports sign guaranteed (one might say "actual") contracts, and NFL players don't. It's completely nuts that the only NFL player who has signed one for this term is D. Watson.
I like how he laid this out. Kirk’ss contract has really put a premium on being able to hit on modest free agent acquisitions and in the draft. We have sucked in the draft overall the past few years.
This article really lays out why this season cannot be viewed as a success. Based on their decisions this off season they acted like they were a contender. Losing in the first round to the 6 seed means that they were wrong with that evaluation.
I think the most likely outcome for the 2023 season is Coller's "natural tank". I don't think they will go full rebuild, but will try again to keep the aging roster together as much as possible and age /bad breaks finally catch up with them. My biggest worry is that they extend Cousins only for cap savings just to fit in Jefferson's extension. We will really see this off season if Kwesi is going to repeat the mistakes of the Spielman era.
Your last sentence is the key. It doesn't make sense to pay players who aren't making game-changing plays. We know what the previous administration did; we'll see if there is a course-correction this off-season.
They were outscored on the season and in the basement on yards and points allowed: with this coaching/roster it was not a contender. Losing to the Jints was irksome, but did that loss tell us anything we didn't already know?
Thanks Eric. Reality hurts but since Ziggy and Mark have owned the team it's always been good but not good enough. And the one playoff win could've been a loss very easily Rudolph also could've been called for PI. Always good to read your written work and when you've did a podcast with Matt.
Money, money, money... The Vikes need to do some major housecleaning ($$$) for a bright future. If we could trade Cousins (with his permission) for a few decent draft picks, I say do it. We need to rebuild and it will be painful. The big question is will the Wilf's allow it?
He has no trade value unless we eat a lot of cap that we don't have. I would guess a fourth rounder as is. He is Amari Cooper. He was an 1100 yard receiver for a 5th rounder because it was a bad contract.
Having all the QB trades from last year blow up in teams faces definitely hurts his value also. But teams get weird about QBs. If Brady retires and Rogers stays put then teams like the Jets and Raiders who think they have good rosters but no QBs may get desperate. After this season I think you could get at least what ATL did for Matt Ryan last year, which was a 3rd.
There I think you are extremely wrong. In the end teams that think they are a QB away will pay up and Cousins was generally very good this year. You do not win so many close games without a QB with balls of steel. That said as Olddrummer said the decision (which longer term would be correct) to blow up the roster lies with the Wilfs and not Kwesi.)
I think it was reported that the going rate for Kirk was a 3rd rounder from Indy. Even in a really bad QB draft year it was a 3rd. If it had been a 1st rounder he would have been gone. I think it’s less than a 3rd rounder this year. Contract isn’t any better and he was good not great. The draft is a much more viable option for more teams this year. I’m not a hater. He would have done MUCH better than Matt Ryan but he’s no better trade bait 1 year later.
Nah his contract is way better this year than it was last year for trading.
Last year if we traded him the team acquiring him would have had to pay Kirk 45MM in 2022. Of course at that point the team taking him on wouldn't be interested. The Vikes could have converted some of that into a signing bonus to give him a more palatable salary for the acquiring team, but at that point the Vikes are going to be less inclined to trade him because they have to pay him to go away.
Conversely, this year a team taking Cousins on would "only" have to pay him 30MM this year, and could move on for him for free after the year. That is a far more palatable option (would rank 12th for 2023 cap hit among QBs just below Goff).
I do not remember that report at all. And again, it comes down to situation. A team in a rebuild or far away should not think about it.. But a team like the Jets (very good team with a crappy QB) he could be an excellent fit . And Cousins is still younger than Ryan and in many ways looked vg (not great). And you are totally WRONG about if it was a first rounder he would have been gone. Not saying that Kwesi would not have done it, the Wilfs would not have allowed it. Pretty simple. Cousins was not going to be traded last year (ok, if a similar haul to what the Seahawks got for Wilson then maybe, but realistically the Wilfs wanted to run it back)
I generally agree with this article.. I do think this is overstated
> Garrett Bradbury, Ezra Cleveland, Wyatt Davis and Ed Ingram, all players who have flopped.
Bradbury was certainly over drafted (ie we spent too much capital on him), Cleveland has been acceptable and Ingram we only have his rookie year (a lot of OLs bloom late so just looking at his rookie year and calling him a flop is just lazy analysis)
That said, this is the perfect year to flop
1. Obviously dead money will hurt 2023 but lets clean up the crap.
2. We face a tough schedule and also 9 away games. We will not be doing well anyway.
3. We have some very solid young pieces (and maybe more as we really do not know what we have in Cine, Booth, Evans, Nailor yes, they might all be worth nothing but maybe they will be pretty good with some seasoning and health) . Asamoah looks like a starter from his limited reps
Again, the decision rests with the WIlfs. That simple. We can criticize Kwesi on the execution of a competitive rebuild but the mandate was from the Wilfs
I agreed with a lot of this.
-As you said, Cleveland would not be a problem at all if we had better OL play on the other interior spots or a QB that was less intensely susceptible to interior pressure, and Bradbury has shown that can also be a worthwhile NFL player. Listing all of those as unequivocal flops is a bit lazy.
-This was my first time looking at the 2023 opponents. Woof. Some teams we know will be brutal like the Chiefs, Niners, Bengals, Eagles, and then a few other teams that underperformed but could have bounce-back seasons such as the Chargers and Broncos. I expect that the Falcons, Bucs, and Saints might all be floundering, but the Panthers actually are building something and might be dangerous. Raiders are a complete wild card to me. When you combine that with the Lions looking competent and the Packers figuring out some WRs to end the year, and I am guessing that we will be leading Bill Barnwell's article about regression candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if Vegas gives us the same win total next year as we had this year despite the better record.
- Agreed with our good pieces, especially on offense. A lot of teams would be delighted to take a foundation of JJ, Hock, Darrisaw, and O'Neill, with other interesting pieces sprinkled throughout. Defense is more tricky to spot foundational pieces, but recent history has shown that it is more important to build on offense anyway.
- Beyond that, I am less absolutely convinced that it was the Wilfs and the Wilfs alone that is pulling the strings. I do think that it is logical to assume that, especially given how little has changed going from Rick to Kwesi, but certainly Kwesi has said nothing to indicate that he is powerless to have the Vikings turn the page.
Allowing Ed Donatell to enter the Stadium was the reason they lost. Wide receivers running wide open all over the middle of the field never should have happened. That game should have been 24-7 Vikings but for the defensive scheme. Never should have come down to 4th and 8. Vikings should have won that one going away. Keep the offense mostly as is, replace the Defensive coordinator, add an o lineman, 3 quality defensive backs and a 1 d lineman in the draft or through free agency and LETS GO!
Eric's not wrong but it's way more than just Cousins. Dropping him is just the easiest fix. Barr's cap hit was $10M this year. That was a debacle of a signing. We paid an RB. Is Cook worth $10M more than Mattison? We paid Michael Pierce and Sheldon Richardson and Kyle Rudolph and Jeff Gladney another $10M more. We convert salary to bonuses and push money into the future for guys. Or they have balloons at the end that make them completely untradeable. We spent a lot of money on a defense that was horrible. Dalvin Tomlinson's contract is over but we have 7.5 million more cap hit to pay. People relate to every bad cap hit as if Kirk made them do it. Almost no one not on a rookie deal is tradable for anything. They found that out before this year started.
I appreciate that it was brought up that it is the contract structure that is the ultimate problem. While an overpayment, the lack of flexibility from the short term, guaranteed nature of the deal is the real albatross that comes with Cousins.
Time to start the cleaning. Drop Kendricks and Hicks. Drop Zadarius, started great but disappeared 1/2 way through season. Drop Theilan. Drop Cook or trade if possible. That will get books much better. Let Kirk ride his contact out. Draft best DE or WR with your 1st pick, draft all D for rest. Natural tank season and pick your next QB in 2024.
Thielen is basically not worth cutting this year. You would save only 6MM while still owing him 13.5MM. It is next year that we can move on for "only" 7MM in dead cap. Incidentally, that turned into a pretty awful extension Kwesi handed out.
You could (and they probably will) drop Hicks for 5MM in cap savings, Cook for 6MM in cap savings, and Kendricks for 9.5MM in cap savings. Each of those make sense as they are at low-value positions, and those gets the Vikings to only 2MM below the salary cap. It also seems reasonable to cut Zadarius for another 13.6MM in cap savings, though DE is a high-value position so I could see keeping him (and to instead do something like extending Hunter to get under the cap).
Beyond that, I would prefer to grab our QB this year so long as the evaluations keep coming in positive on QBs. You don't want to head into an offseason with no QB on your roster that you want to keep around when the NFL has a poor QB draft. Moreover, picking at 23 is a very decent spot for either picking a QB that slides or trading up into the teens. Lots of good history on our side for picking a middle-of-the-first-round QB that we can start at our leisure.
Just don't kick the can down the road with Theilan. I'm ok going QB, but just assume at 24 your getting lower tier QB. If someone good is there, do it.
The years-long trend of kicking cap hits down the road was dumb, period. The allocation of capital (draft and $) to RBs was criminal. The run of Elflein, Cleveland, Bradbury, the serial rapist, Wyatt and Samia was staggeringly unproductive.
The easiest way to win is to have a good QB on a rookie deal. However, executing that strategy is hard and can also result in being the Bears, Jets, Browns or Cardinals. Of the 14 playoff teams, only 5 are paying QBs, but it seems pretty likely Hurts, Danny Dimes, Burrow, Herbert and Jackson (by someone) are going to get paid this offseason. Being able to competently manage a roster while paying a QB is not a big ask--it's a key part of being a GM.
Disagree that executing the strategy of winning with a rookie QB is hard, at least compared to what the Vikings have done. I mean the Bears with True Biscuit ended up with a stretch very similar to what the Vikings have had with Kirk - a single NFC North crown, two playoff appearances, one season with over 10 wins, etc. I would say the same with Cleveland with Mayfield or the Cards with Kyler, both of which had highs that were basically the same as what the Vikes have had with Kirk. The Jets are the best example of it going poorly, but frankly ATM I would almost prefer to be the Jets over the next 5 years more than the Vikes - the Jets have an elite infrastructure and are at a good spot to take whichever of the QBs slide or trade up to get whichever they prefer.
Beyond that an extension to Dimes likely wouldn't be prohibitive the way that Kirk's contract was, and an extension to Hurts, Burrow, or Herbert likely wouldn't kick in with massive money for another 2 or 3 years. We have never had such a runway with Kirk, and our roster reflects that.
Lamar Jackson seemingly wants massive money now. Not coincidentally, Lamar Jackson has not signed a contract despite being on what is widely considered one of the smartest teams in the NFL, where now there is rumblings that Lamar might not even sign with said smart team.
The key part is either finding an elite QB or making sure that you aren't paying a non-elite QB top dollar. The smart teams know this. We will see whether or not the Vikings are one of these smart teams.
It's fair to want to take a swing at upgrading. I take your point about comparable success; the only difference is those outcomes came with the benefit and risk of a cheap QB, the Vikings did so while paying market QB rates--which doesn't come with the risk of a bust.
The other relevant issue now is when Cousins will fall off a cliff. Paying for age 30-35 seasons is a different assessment than 36-38. Rusty and Matty Ice didn't exactly age like Brady.
The current roster reflects poor drafting + kicking caps hits down the road--neither of which are caused by paying a QB. With Jackson, he didn't re-sign because he hasn't been prepared to accept that the sexual predator in Cleveland's deal is an outlier. He was offered a pre-Watson market extension and passed.
Some excellent points there! My main quibble is that I don't actually think that our current roster reflects poor drafting, I would say that it reflects average drafting. The draft is a crapshoot, and even the best teams will have lots of drafts where all they get is JAGs. I mean, over the last four years the Vikings draft picks have an weighted average value (from PFR) of 318 - that is better than baltimore, buffalo, and the eagles, three teams that are widely thought of as good drafting teams. If you take this exact same team that the Vikings have right now and all you do is give it a better DC and a elite QB like Burrow, Allen, Mahomes, etc., and this team is immediately a legit contender because the recent drafting has landed enough legit stars (Jefferson, Darrisaw, O'Neill) and enough competent players (Osborn, Bynum, Ezra, Dantzler) that if they ALSO had an extra 30MM per year to spend via rookie savings that that is the difference. I mean our OL is unambiguously better than what Joe Burrow has taken to a superbowl, and how many times have we heard that the reason why we can't win with Kirk is because our OL isn't good enough?
Though, while I would argue the team has drafted a generally average number of useful players, I think they have done a very poor job of drafting for positions of value. Generally you want to use the early rounds to draft the players that are paid the most (QB, DE, WR, CB, OT), as this money indicates the scarcity of these positions and also shows how much money you can save when you are instead locked into rookie wages. Conversely, the Vikings have spent way too many high picks on safety, guard, center, ILB, which are all among the lowest paid positions. It has been frustrating to watch.
Otherwise, yes, that is what I meant with Jackson - he wanted a mega-bucks contract that didn't have a slow ramp up and wasn't team friendly, and he seeming won't take anything else.
I think the big issue with our drafting was after an amazing 2015 we whiffed from 2016-18. 2019 was mediocre with average to better than average 2020 and 21 (22 a bit too early to tell)
The weighted average is an interesting metric; it's certainly a joy to watch JJ, Darrisaw and O'Neill (who hopefully has a full recovery), but those picks can distort the number of misses/below average players. If there had been a competent DC, and one of noted-abuser-Gladney or Hughes were a league-average or better starter, that would have made a big difference defensively this year. The Vikings' drafts have been a bit boom/bust, which of course means stars + a lack of depth. Agreed, drafting is hard and it's not as if, e.g., Mickey Loomis has had anything like his 2017 draft before or since, and there has been a general lack of understanding positional value, both with draft capital and second/third contracts.
The issue with Jackson is the guarantees, not the cap hit. The year-over-year cap hits don't change based upon later years' salaries being guaranteed. It's a little nuts that the players in the other big 4 sports sign guaranteed (one might say "actual") contracts, and NFL players don't. It's completely nuts that the only NFL player who has signed one for this term is D. Watson.
I like how he laid this out. Kirk’ss contract has really put a premium on being able to hit on modest free agent acquisitions and in the draft. We have sucked in the draft overall the past few years.