Friday Mailbag: Onto the offseason

Vikings fans have a lot of questions about what comes next and who's responsible for the Vikings disappointing season

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Friday, everybody! Let’s dive right into your questions…

Dermo Man….. Hi Matt. What are your thoughts on keeping Nailor, trading Addison and taking a receiver in Round 1 of this year’s draft. By the time this year’s R1 WR is due his second contract, Jefferson will be c30, timing would be good ? Or would your prioritize corner and / or safety above that ?

I do not think it’s a crazy idea and I see the logic. There are some issues logistically though. First, Jalen Nailor is going to be pretty expensive. When you look at guys last year who got $10 million plus, the list includes a bunch of mid receivers like Dyami Brown, Tutu Atwell and Josh Palmer. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if somebody tossed $12-$15 million at Nailor. My understanding is that his reputation is really good around the NFL and people see him as a hidden gem.

Addison is very cheap for next year and the Vikings do not have an ideal cap situation to swap out a more talented $4 million cap hit for a less talented $12-$15 million cap hit. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

In terms of drafting a wide receiver, that’s also tough because the Vikings probably won too many games to get one of the top wideouts in the draft. Yes, they got Jefferson around the range they are picking this year but that was an insane draft with crazy WR talent at the top. You’re also looking to win now, so it’s a big risk to swap out a guy who’s very good for a total unknown. Again, not impossible though.

It really depends on their belief in Addison. He had a bad year that included 3.25 games of suspension.

The most likely scenario seems like either tight end (if they move on from Hock), center (if there is one) or someone in the secondary. However, it seems like the strength in that middle of the right round might be at defensive tackle. If they move on from Hargrave, you could see that happening.

A lot is up in the air for the draft. We need to see who stays and who goes but I am expecting Addison to still be here.

Andrew K… Hey Matt. Since I’m Captain Obvious: What are you hearing about Flores departing the Vikes (haven’t seen him mentioned as interviewing anywhere yet), and their latest thoughts on QB (and has their been any outreach to teams)?

He is interviewing with the Baltimore Ravens — though about half of the NFL’s coordinators are also interviewing with Baltimore.

The Flores situation has layers on layers on layers. Is anyone going to hire him with the pending lawsuit? Why didn’t he sign an extension in Minnesota? Will another team offer him a DC position that he can’t refuse? How will his previous relationship with Tua impact his chances? Is there something he wants/needs to return that isn’t money? Does the QB situation impact how he feels about it?

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I can only guess.

As far as the QBs, the Vikings could call teams like the Bengals and Ravens now to check in on Burrow and Jackson. The Stafford for Goff trade was agreed upon in late January but wasn’t actually completed until the start of the new year.

Kyler Murray is most likely to get released because nobody’s taking on that contract. It’s like the Russell Wilson situation with Denver. Geno Smith could be one. The Raiders save $26 million if they trade him. But who’s taking on that cap hit? The deal would have to go along with some new structure.

Outside of that, the 49ers are in the playoffs, so you’re not bugging them about Mac Jones. The late night conversations in Indianapolis at the Combine are where they’ll check in about Malik Willis and Kirk Cousins. The Colts keep talking like Daniel Jones is their QB of the future, so that doesn’t look like an option.

Let me just put it this way: There’s probably a lot of time for us to talk about this.

Brad L…Who are you cheering for in the playoffs? Why them? What’s your favorite playoff storyline?

Cheering isn’t really my thing but I tend to enjoy when quarterbacks win who everybody painted as not being clutch or whatever. Obviously Sam Darnold goes to the top of that list. I was so impressed with Darnold’s professionalism in Minnesota and the way he’s handled the fact that the Vikings moved on that it would be great to see him win the Super Bowl. He’s deserving and nobody has gotten more crap from media than him over the years.

Naturally, Josh Allen and the Bills have come so close over and over. My family and friends in Buffalo would go crazy.

Trevor Lawrence falls under the Sam Darnold category of being really good and getting a bunch of bad breaks.

I get a kick out of when the draft analysis community is hilariously wrong about quarterbacks so I might not be sad if Bo Nix won it all.

Everybody said Brock Purdy wasn’t actually good, it was just his coach and weapons.

Danielle Hunter winning would be something. One of the best teammates and most humble humans you’ll ever run into.

That’s just a few.

My favorite storyline is that nobody is great. The conference winners have questions. There’s no Mahomes or Brady. All the other NFC teams have their shortcomings and strengths but you can’t argue that any one of them just crushed the league this year. It seems wide open.

I’m taking Bills over Rams in the Super Bowl.

Connor J… Hi Matt, thanks for your work. Taking a step back and applying a big picture perspective, what went well for the Vikings this year that we can realistically build on heading into next year? This can be anything, schematic, philosophical, unit, coaching, etc.

Quite a few things went right. The Vikings badly needed some things to go right with draft picks and Dallas Turner and Donovan Jackson both clicking is huge for them. Those guys are not at their ceilings yet and they were above average players this year.

Will Reichard and Ryan Wright can be the kicker and punter here for a really long time. They were the best duo in the NFL.

Jalen Redmond was a straight up star. Jordan Mason showed that he can be really effective as part of a duo. Isaiah Rodgers proved to be an above average starting outside corner.

In terms of scheme or philosophy etc., I’m not sure that there’s a lot to love outside of Brian Flores proving again that he’s the top defensive mind in the game. They never really came up with an offensive identity because of all the stops and starts with JJ McCarthy.

I don’t accept the idea that KOC should have known how much McCarthy could handle when the guy played two games and then stopped for five, played three more and then stopped and then played two halves. Any time that criticism ever comes up, it’s like, “why didn’t you have a really dumbed down, simple version of your offense and run 60% of the time?!?!” …that’s more about the QB, even if there are a dozen specific play calls we could point to and wonder, “why not just run there?” But how are you supposed to know that you have to run all the time if the QB spreads out 243 passes over a season?

Jim L… Hi Matt, do you think the Vikings will replace their quarterback coach? Do you think KOC will delegate play calling to his offensive coordinator next season?

I know everyone wants somebody fired when the team comes short of expectations but we can’t just point at people and say they should be canned. It is possible that they could make changes on the offensive coaching staff but it would be a total guess if they were going to do that with no real evidence.

There is no chance that O’Connell gives up play calling. He will be calling plays as long as he has the job.

Rzuppelli… I have always thought that “Bane’s Prison” from The Dark Night Rises is the perfect analogy for Vikings fandom.

Am I missing any other more applicable pop culture analogs?

I think being a Vikings fan is like enjoying a band that puts out a lot of good albums but never wins the Grammy for Album of the Year. There’s always good hit singles, yet always something missing.

That’s from my perspective. I know that for a lot of folks, it’s a much deeper, more tortured existence. But we can keep perspective, right?

Brad L… Given the success of the quarterbacks drafted alongside McCarthy what are the odds of him becoming our solution? It just seems historically (statistically?) a certain amount number of them are bound to not live up to the hype. How might this notion influence leaderships decision making?

Yeah, no matter what happens with the other QBs from the class, the odds of landing a QB who wins 11+ games at any point in their career with the team that drafted them is about 50%. There’s a lot of similar caliber prospects who haven’t worked out.

Like, if we look at guys who were picked from 10-25, we get Justin Fields, Mac Jones, Dwayne Haskins, Josh Rosen, Kenny Pickett, Pat Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, Johnny Manziel, Brandon Weeden, EJ Manuel, Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder, Tim Tebow, Josh Freeman, Brady Quinn etc.

You can toss in Jordan Love at 26 and Teddy/Lamar at 32, but you get the point. Once you get out of the top 10, the odds are really not in your favor.

In terms of the decision making, it’s the toughest thing in the sport to decide how long to give a quarterback. If you bail too early, you look stupid. If you wait too long, you’re fired.

Knowing that the history isn’t great for QBs in that range should probably make them lean a bit more toward a real QB this offseason.

Scott L… What are you hearing about Aaron Jones? He seems like a high character guy, team captain, and certainly gave it his all at the end of the season. But he also has a high price tag next year for a running back with his production and injury history

Not just a high character guy but a rare, rare human being who impacts everyone around him.

However, there are realities of football. The Packers moved on because they felt like the cost and injury history was too concerning. In this case, things might end up going the same way.

They probably need to aim for a young star RB. I’m not a fan of drafting RBs in the first round but you could convince me that a second-round pick is worth it. Jordan Mason is a really strong RB2, probably as good as you’ll find in the league, but he’s like Alex Mattison-plus, not like Dalvin Cook. They need a Dalvin Cook.

Mark T… Matt: Should Flo happen to get a head coaching job, where he leaves as the Def. Coordinator, has anyone given the thought to offering the job to Harrison Smith. I can’t believe it would be that much of a change for him, as he knows the defense inside and out. He was given the authority to change calls when he sees something that could hurt the original call and he is a competitor and hates to lose. No offense to Daronte Jones by the way.

I understand where people are coming from when they ask about this but playing safety and being the defensive coordinator isn’t even remotely similar. Remember how Terence Newman took a lower level coaching job and quit after a year because it was way too stressful?

I’m not going to speak for what Harrison should do — yes, he could probably figure it out — but we never see players go directly from playing to coordinating an entire offense or defense.

Daronte Jones has earned the opportunity if Flores leaves. He’s grinded through multiple regimes and been a vital part of constructing this defense. Smith has cited him numerous times as a major reason for their success.

If Jones and Flores go, I could see Raheem Morris being the guy.

Brad L… Any of the fired coaches you’d want to bring on board as a coordinator/consultant?

Other than Raheem Morris if they lose Flores, I’m not really sure who would be willing to come here. Maybe Jonathan Gannon? I was impressed with some of the stuff they did in 2024. Offensive guys like Mike McDaniel, Kevin Stefanski or Brian Daboll will be offensive coordinators somewhere else. There might be an O-line coach they would consider if they weren’t thrilled with what happened with Chris Kuper this year (but I thought he was dealt a really bad hand and managed it OK).

Lorne S…I know a lot has been said about Dallas Turner’s improvement over last year, but when you look at his overall PFF grade, it really hasn’t moved much. We said that if McCarthy showed improvement over his last five games it was probably fool’s gold given the awful teams they were playing. The same might be true for Dallas Turner, since his best games also came late in the season.
What do you think—real improvement, or fool’s gold?

Yeah, I think the biggest difference there is the pass rush grade. Last year’s grade for Turner was boosted by that sick interception against Seattle, which gave him a better coverage grade than pass rush. But when you look at this year, it’s 70.2 vs. 55.2 in pass rush. That’s the difference between being ranked 40th out of 130 edge rushers and 103rd last year. Huge jump.

Certainly there were some fool’s gold plays, like the sacks against Clayton Tune. But if you go through any pass rusher you can find “easy” sacks or big games against backup tackles. Where you can see the progress is that his highest graded games in pass rush are vs. Detroit, Seattle, Green Bay (the first time), Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

It also matches up with what we saw from him in camp and what his coaches said about him. He’s a smart guy who clearly put in the work.

Matt D… Do you think the Ravens were fools to fire Harbaugh? My initial reaction was that people being too hard on the Ravens. The guy has coached there for 18 years and they’ve underperformed with an MVP level QB. But then I looked at their playoff history and saw that they were in the playoffs in 6 out of the last 8 years and were in the conference championship like two years ago. Pretty hard to complain about that even if 18 years makes the whole thing feel a bit stale.

Yep. I’ve always felt that the worst circle of NFL Hell to live in was the one where you have Dan Marino or Jim Kelly and you never get a Super Bowl. Regular seasons become dull and frustrating. Nothing matters except one game in January and every loss feels like you’re way too flawed to ever get over the top and wasting away one of the greatest careers in history.

Most times when that happens, the coach loses his job despite tons of regular season success. Jim Mora coached Peyton Manning to 13 and 10-win seasons and then got fired. John Elway had Dan Reeves and Wade Phillips both get canned. Philip Rivers had a coach get fired at 14 wins. Matt Ryan had one down year and they fired Mike Smith.

So I get it. Things got stale and tense there. They need a spark, so they made the move.

Robert S… Hi Matt, I have a request for a future article. I can see that a coach can work with JJM on his mechanics and that might improve his accuracy. Your All-22 recaps have shown that outside of bad throws, JJM has problems with throwing on time, etc. Beyond film study, how can/does a QB coach work on those things with JJM without game play?

That’s a great point. Timing goes along with fundamentals. If you are not hop-skip-jumping up in the pocket and just releasing when you hit the back foot, it’s going to be timed out better. If you’re not winding up like you’re Tori Hunter throwing from the outfield wall, it’s going to time out better.

Something Kurt Warner told me before the season was that throwing a “softer” ball was so much easier for wide receivers to make you look accurate and on time because they can make adjustments as they’re going after it. If you’re throwing 1000mph, then it’s gotta be right on the dot. All those things can improve with technique.

Jason… What is the matchup this weekend you are most excited for?

My two favorite matchups and Packers-Bears because of the location, history, Caleb Williams intrigue etc. and Buffalo vs. Jacksonville. To me Bills-Jags might actually be the two strongest teams in the AFC.

Bradley P… I’m a KOC fan boy but sell me that this years quarterback coaching along with Josh McCown wasn’t a complete abomination. From their belief in JJ, to their disbelief in Sam, to Max being in that situation (instead of the practice squad) and so over his head. I get it that Grant Udinski was a big loss but he can’t be the reason they bombed this hard.

I’m not staying Brian Flores isn’t great but why do we forget about allowing 300+ yards to two Eagles receivers, forgetting to cover DK Metcalf, the Falcons rushing for over 200 yards, the inability to coach anyone under 24 years old with the exception of Turner? What say you?