Inside Vikings fans' new obsession: Sharing Trevor Lawrence photoshops
Lots of Vikings fans are sharing pictures of Lawrence in purple but their viewpoints on tanking aren't all the same
*This Trevor Lawrence photoshop was credited by fans to a Twitter account called @Vikingsgraphics but it’s unclear if that’s where it originated.*
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If you are reading this article on the internet, that means you have already seen Trevor Lawrence photoshopped into a Minnesota Vikings uniform by now.
It’s hard to pin down the exact date in which the first Vikings-Lawrence photoshop was born but its popularity gained momentum after the Vikings opened the season with two duds against the Green Bay Packers and Indianapolis Colts. After they fell to 0-3 via a last-minute loss to the Tennessee Titans, literally every tweet sent out by the Vikings official account (which has 1.3 million followers) was flooded by responses from fans attaching the Lawrence-Vikings picture.
On its surface, the fan intrigue with the presumed No. 1 overall pick in 2021 makes sense.
The Vikings are clearly in the middle of reshaping their roster following the exits of a half dozen prominent players from the Mike Zimmer era. Their struggles over the first three weeks do not appear immediately solvable or a product of bad luck. And Lawrence is a marvelous prospect. In fact, Pro Football Focus draft analyst Mike Renner said he’s never covered a better QB prospect.
“He’s the best quarterback prospect I’ve seen in my years of doing this, I think he’s better than Andrew Luck, I think he has a bigger arm than Andrew Luck,” Renner said. “I think the things he does are very translatable to the NFL. Being able to throw with timing, being able to get through multiple reads, being able to scan the whole field and being able to read blitzes and get the ball out of his hands. And he has an absolute cannon. He can underratedly run fast and he can add to your run game…there’s a lot you can do with him. When you get that guy in the NFL, it’s a decade of prosperity.”
But three weeks into the season seems a little soon for Vikings fans to get behind the Tank For Trevor movement. The team just signed quarterback Kirk Cousins to a three-year contract extension this offseason and extended Zimmer and GM Rick Spielman as well. They also have Pro Bowlers all over the field, from Adam Thielen to Eric Kendricks to Yannick Ngakoue to Harrison Smith.
This team doesn’t exactly profile as one to tank.
So why are Vikings fans so batty online for Lawrence photoshops and memes? Well, I decided to call three Vikings fans who tweeted the Lawrence-Vikings photoshops last week and find out.
The Kirk Cousins conundrum
You would think fans tweeting Trevor Lawrence images would be at their wit’s end with Kirk Cousins. You might figure they’ve seen enough and want to put Cousins in a rocket ship and fire him off into space. But that isn’t really the case.
Our three interview subjects felt conflicted about Cousins — and even a little bit bad for firing off Lawrence tweets that insinuate they want nothing more to do with the present quarterback.
“[The Lawrence photo] captured the sentiment of: Can we have something nice and shiny with some flash?” said Robb Thibault, a Vikings fan from Oneonta, New York. “It’s not to be demeaning to Mr. Cousins. He’s a golly-gee-good-guy and he’s a good quarterback.”
Thibault grew up in Detroit and fell in love with the Vikings when his dad, an old school Hell’s Kitchen product and Giants fan, decided to jump on board with the NFL’s new Midwest team in the 60s. Thibault’s father worked for Northwest Orient after time in the Air Force and got to know many other Vikings fans because the Orient’s hub was in Minneapolis. Thibault caught his first live Vikings game in 1974 against the St. Louis Cardinals and was in the very end zone that Ahmad Rashad caught his famous game-winning touchdown against the Browns in 1980.
Thibault doesn’t consider himself the next Bill Parcells when it comes to football knowledge but he cares a lot. Here’s how passionate he is: Thibault was driving through Pennsylvania during the Week 1 loss to the Packers and had to pull the car over with frustration as he listened to the radio broadcast. But he talked himself back into the season turning around. Going into last week, he figured the Vikings’ first two weeks might just be their version of the preseason. When they lost to the Titans, that’s when that Lawrence meme became more attractive.
“Right now I’m in doom and gloom,” he said.
The Lawrence photo gave him life.
“That meme, it’s a wonderful meme,” Thibault said. “I saw that and I thought, that is beautiful, it is spot on. I feel bad for Cousins…he’s a great quarterback when everything is set up for him. We need a lightning bolt. I know Lawrence isn’t a guarantee but it could be a lightning bolt. I just thought it captured the spirit of some of us.”
It’s a weird reality to like your team’s quarterback but only to a point.
“I know that given the right setup, the right scheme, a great O-line, I think [Cousins] could terrorize opponents,” Thibault said, speaking a little louder and faster than before. “But we don’t have that. I think he’s a part of an age of quarterbacks where mobility is a necessary part of the game. I get frustrated. Sorry. I just got frustrated on you.”
Dane from St. Paul also sent out a Lawrence meme, partly out of annoyance with himself. He was pumped when the Vikings signed Cousins. He felt the Vikings finally had the guy that they had been chasing for a long time — the one who would have them in contention every year. Now he thinks that his instincts in 2018 were off base.
“I overvalued Kirk Cousins and thought that Kirk Cousins was able to provide an 11 or 12-win season… and I thought he’s a good quarterback and someone you can surround talent with and I’ve definitely been proven wrong this year,” Dane said. “The play calling is what it is, the receivers are pretty great but if you don’t have an offensive line I don’t believe Kirk Cousins is going to be able to elevate your team.”
Dane, whose age range would be considered either old Gen Z or young Millennial, grew up as a fan of both the Vikings and Seattle Seahawks. The origin of his Seattle fandom comes from trips to Seattle with his stepfather, an author who attended book signings in the Pacific Northwest. He’ll make you feel ancient by describing Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander from his “childhood.” But he’s aged with one of his teams having a dynamic QB in Russell Wilson and the other struggling to find The Guy.
“Kirk Cousins with an average to below average roster won’t get you any exceptional results like a Russell Wilson or a Trevor Lawrence could,” Dane said.
Another Lawrence meme share-er, Terry from Hibbing, Minnesota, isn’t willing to say he’s finished with Cousins but folks up North have a different way of expressing such things.
“It’s just like the Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers thing,” Terry said. “You draft him and let him sit and let him learn. I don’t know how much he’d learn from Kirk Cousins other than losing to playoff teams.”
“He just needs to grab ahold of the reins and get a little more marbles and say, ‘this is my team, let’s get going’ and try to light a fire under this team,” he added.
Terry explained that he has been “addicted” to the Vikings since he watched their last Super Bowl appearance in 1976 with his family. His dad was a Packers fan but decided to jump on board with the local squad when the Vikings joined the league. It was important to Terry’s father that the family supported their state’s teams.
Terry has seen all the journeyman quarterbacks come and go like Randall Cunningham, Jim McMahon, Case Keenum etc. And he’s seen a few high draft picks like Daunte Culpepper and Christian Ponder. He’s never seen a generational prospect here. He figures it might be pretty fun to see his team pick No. 1 overall, as they nearly did in the 2012 draft (but they missed out because of a late-December win against Washington). But for a Lawrence-photoshop share-er, he’s a little more skeptical than the others about Lawrence having all the answers.
“Look at the Jets, they got Sam Darnold and he can’t do jack,” Terry said. “Some quarterbacks make it, some don’t. Is he going to be the real deal? I think he’s going to be the real deal.”
Does meme-sharing equal tank support?
Losing is harder than you think.
On Madden, you can put the punter in at quarterback and simulate the season and easily cruise to the No. 1 overall pick. In real life, an entire group of the best people in the world at their craft have to fall on their faces for five straight months. The Vikings’ chances at doing that aren’t particularly high. ESPN tweeted that the Jets and Giants are the runaway favorites for the No. 1 pick. Despite having a win, the Jaguars ranked third on ESPN’s list, not the Vikings.
The Lawrence photo folks recognize this fact when they are tweeting pictures of the Clemson quarterback.
“That’s part of the hot air, it’s hot air about wanting this,” Thibault said. “If it happened, I think I would be dumbfounded. There’s still enough talent on the field to play some good ball.”
Terry still hasn’t given up on this season. He thinks the Vikings can still get things together and fight for .500, which might just get them into the playoffs in the expanded format.
“I don’t believe in tanking, I really don’t,” Terry said. “I believe, is he a once-in-a-lifetime prospect? Heck yeah. If he’s there and let’s say Minnesota picks there at that spot, I’d be happy that they got him. But I really don’t believe in tanking. Yes I do like the pictures of Trevor Lawrence. I don’t say ‘Tank For Trevor’ or anything like that. My brother and I are pretty optimistic they’ll turn it around. I still think the cornerbacks will be better, they just need a little more time.”
Vikings fans are also tweeting out pictures of Lawrence jerseys each time something goes wrong on the field
Dane takes a different view on this matter. Remember, he’s the younger one of the three fans. He grew up in the darkness of “Suck For Luck” and “The Process,” the other older fans just adapted to the new ways of sports. Younger fans see it as a strategy — a button you push — and not something offensive to all of our sports sensibilities that tell us that winning this Sunday’s game is what matters most.
“Big picture, it would really be healthy for the team,” Dane said. “It would be an excruciating season to go through and if they were looking at new leadership, I definitely think that’s the prize at the end, one of those three big quarterbacks.”
As an aside: He’s referring to Trey Lance and Justin Fields. Tank For Trevor memes aren’t just about Trevor, they’re about the hope that someone new provides. The aforementioned lightning bolt of excitement to a franchise.
The way Dane sees it, if you don’t have That Guy at quarterback, it’s just not worth putting your entire heart into a team every Sunday. So for him, everything should be about That Guy, even if the only direction is to sink to the very bottom.
“If you don’t have a Wilson or Rodgers or a quarterback like that, I don’t think an 11 or 12 win season is even something to be that optimistic about,” Dane said. “The Vikings being traditionally a team that doesn’t fall out and win two or three games, it would be tough to see happening but I think it would be worth it this year.”
But even Dane, our lead tank strategist fan, said that if the Dolphins can go 5-11 last year while trying to strip their team down to the screws, he can’t see the Vikings continuing to come up short when they play teams like Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Jacksonville and Carolina. He’s really just trying glean some entertainment out of Lawrence photoshops in a season that might not have many memorable moments otherwise.
“The Trevor Lawrence memes are more of a joke,” Dane said. “I treat Twitter as a comic relief. An escape. Fun back and forth with people. That’s where I view the Lawrence thing.”
Losing isn’t just harder than you think, it’s more miserable than you imagine when firing off a Lawrence social media post. Things get ugly. If the Vikings went 2-14 or worse, that means none of their already-young roster would have progressed and people probably lose their jobs.
“Deep down there’s no way I want them to tank like that,” Thibault said. “It’s just being disgusted with the meh play we see. I just want more, as many fans do.”
“Torture. Yeah. I don’t like watching losing,” Terry said.
And then Terry paused and said: “But it happens.”
What if it happens?
I asked all three of our Lawrence meme’ing fans to picture it. Let’s say (and hope) COVID is gone by the next draft. Imagine a world where Lawrence is flipping his beautiful hair as he walks across the stage to put on the Vikings’ hat as the No. 1 overall pick. He approaches Roger Goodell, they embrace, he waves to the crowd of Vikings faithful who have traveled from around the country to get a glimpse of their franchise savior.
“I’m going to feel significantly more optimistic about the future than I do now,” Thibault said.
“If the Vikings were to draft Trevor Lawrence…you’re looking at legitimacy for the next 15 years,” Dane said.
“If they were to select Trevor Lawrence, they best dang well get an offensive line to protect him, that’s what I’d say,” Terry said.
Now imagine a different world. One where the Vikings have a top pick and don’t take a quarterback. It’s actually not that crazy of a scenario. Washington and Detroit picked No. 2 and No. 3 and had reason to pick QBs Justin Herbert or Tua Tagovailoa but passed to take an edge rusher and cornerback. In 2017 the 49ers traded out of the No. 2 pick in a draft that included DeShaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes.
“I don’t think Rick Spielman could live in Minnesota [if they traded out of the pick],” Thibault said. “He would have to remote work from Newfoundland.”
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Interesting article. Like you, I think there is very little chance that the Vikings end up with the number one overall pick. The only chance of that is Kirk getting hurt.
I will admit, however, that I would welcome that kind of scenario for more reasons than getting Trevor Lawrence. First, it would mean we are finally rid of Spielman. He deserves all of the blame for continually and completely failing to address the offensive line for his entire tenure. Every single year since Zimmer started as coach, the oline has been the main stumbling block that killed this team's chance at a championship. Case is not a better qb than Kirk, but as I have been saying since the day the team acquired Kirk--Case is a better qb for a GM who refuses to field an NFL quality offensive line. He simply does not have the balls to tell Zimmer that he can't have his 3rd first round cb (and 1 2nd round cb) in six years and that he needed to let Barr and Harris walk in free agency, so the Vikings could field an NFL quality offensive line. For the sake of brevity, let's just look at this year. They entered the offseason really needing to replace Elflein at guard and the rest of the line, assuming that Bradbury took a step forward, would've been at least average. Instead of finding someone to replace Elflein, they released Kline, who was better than Elflein and, thereby, created two huge problems on the line. Then, when they needed 2 guards, they signed zero in free agency and didn't draft a guard until the 7th round. Yes, they used their second round pick on a tackle, where they had much less of a need, but then decided to move him to guard instead of just drafting what they needed--a guard. Then they moved Elflein to his third position in as many years and inserted Dozier, who was terrible last year too. Now, Bradbury has no chance of progressing, because he has a disaster on either side of him, so instead of having one problem on the line to replace, Elflein, now they have managed to turn 3 of the 5 positions into an absolute disaster. And don't forget that they very nearly lost Reiff at the end of training camp, which would have meant 4 out of 5 positions being a disaster. You just can't make it up. If I did anything so negligent in my job and failed to fix the problem, I wouldn't make it past year one. Zimmer and Spielman have been doing this crap for six years.
Second, it would mean we are finally rid of Zimmer. Yes, he has generally fielded good defenses, but they have generally failed to show up in big games. The Eagles destroyed Zimmer's best defense in the NFC Championship and it took a miracle to beat the Saints after they came back from a 17 point deficit on Zimmer's D.
Third, we would finally be rid of Cousins. Nice guy, terrible fit for this team and I could see it the minute they signed him. It was 100% clear to me that the Vikings got destroyed by the Eagles oline and dline and that Case wasn't even close to the biggest problem in that game. Put Kirk in at QB in that game, behind that oline and he would've been sacked 10 times. Kirk has two, yes two, quality wins in Minnesota. Packers 2018 at home, Saints 2019 in the playoffs. Every other win was against the garbage teams.
Fourth, we would finally have hope for ten years of prosperity under a franchise qb. We haven't even had hope of a franchise qb since the good Culpepper years.
Last year, the only quality win the team had was against an injury ravaged Saints team and that gave us three more years of Spielman, Zimmer and Cousins. Diggs is looking like a genius.