Is this the last ride for Kendricks and Barr?
Barr is entering the final year of his contract, which makes it possible that this will be the last time he and Eric Kendricks play together
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — When Anthony Barr agreed to leave Minnesota prior to the 2019 season, he couldn’t sleep.
“I was up all morning just looking at my ceiling just looking for a sign,” Barr said on March 14, 2019.
The Vikings’ 2014 first-round pick had given his agent the go-ahead to work out a contract with the New York Jets but Barr quickly felt he’d made a huge mistake. He doubled back and re-signed with the Vikings despite taking less money than he would have earned in The Big Apple.
“I was trying to convince myself of something that I knew in my heart didn’t feel right,” Barr explained.
Last year we got a window into what life would have looked like if Barr had left. In Week 2 against the Indianapolis Colts, he suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery and he was lost for the remainder of the season. Eric Kendricks played alongside Eric Wilson, who filled in admirably but wasn’t the same type of all-around player as Barr.
Kendricks and Barr have been two centerpieces of the Vikings’ defense for nearly the entirety of the Mike Zimmer era. Barr was Zimmer’s first draft pick, taken ninth overall in 2014 and Kendricks was picked in the second round of the 2015 draft. You’d be hard pressed to find any two players at one position that have shared the field as much as they did from 2015-2019. Before last season, Kendricks and Barr both played over 800 snaps in each of those seasons. In 2017 and 2019, they both cleared 1,000 plays.
“It’s always a great time,” Kendricks said. “Me and Anthony have been playing shoot, I think we talked about, 10 years at this point together. So it’s a blessing to play with him. I’m excited to continue another year with him. Our coach in college [at UCLA], I remember him having a meeting and being like, ‘Hey take advantage of this opportunity. You’ll never get to play again together.’ So here we are playing another season together. So I’m just blessed for the opportunity. Obviously we can’t control what happened last year but we can look forward to this year.’’
They’ve been through everything together, from Blair’s miss in the playoffs to Teddy’s injury to Zimmer’s eye surgery to the Minneapolis Miracle to the 2018 disappointment to walking off against the Saints in the Superdome. From ice storms to the murder of George Floyd.
Along the way, Barr has made the Pro Bowl four times and Kendricks was recognized as All-Pro in 2019. They have become active in the Twin Cities community — Kendricks was the Vikings’ Walter Payton Man of the Year finalist last year and Barr’s Raising The Barr foundation supports single parents. They have also become close friends.
“It’s been special, man, we’re very fortunate to have the opportunity to play together so long. I think the relationship has evolved just like any relationship,” Barr said. “We really depend on one another. Off the field, on the field we hold each other accountable in all aspects of life. I’m just very fortunate and blessed to call him a friend.”
As important as they are to the Vikings’ success on defense, there’s a real possibility that this could be the final season in which Barr and Kendricks play together.
Barr already re-worked his contract this offseason to stick around for at least one more year.
“I kind of didn't want to go out like that – I didn’t want my last game being the one in which I got hurt and then missing an entire year,” Barr said of his decision to restructure. “I didn't want that to be my last memory as a Minnesota Viking, so that played a big factor in returning and taking the pay-cut to be back with this organization.”
The result of the restructure is that Barr’s contract is up after this season.
Barr could very well decide that he wants to be a Viking for life and sign another contract but things might be different the second time around. When Barr returned in 2019 the the Vikings were trying to keep the band together and maintain the foundation of the 2017 defense that led them to a 13-3 season. This year the Vikings signed a number of players on defense to short-term contracts with the goal of quickly bouncing back from last year’s 29th ranking in points allowed.
After 2021, the team may have to make difficult decisions on who they’re keeping going forward and it’s hard to know if the 29-year-old linebacker will be one of those players. It’s difficult to project how Barr will feel one year from now, too. If the landscape is different, he might want to look elsewhere for one more big contract or a shot at a Super Bowl.
If this indeed it for Barr-Kendricks, it will be the last chance for Vikings fans to appreciate the synergy of the two linebackers. The team has been nearly begging for years for media and fans to understand Barr’s value. At least five different times this offseason someone has been quoted saying that nobody understands how important Barr is to the operation. Mike Zimmer and co-defensive coordinator Adam Zimmer (similarly) explained how they make each other better.
“[Barr] calls the defense, he gets everybody lined up,” Adam Zimmer said. “I think it makes life a lot easier on Eric Kendricks, where Kendricks likes to just play ball -- find ball, see ball, get ball. Anthony allows him to do that more instead of having to worry about 'Oh, I gotta get the front set, I gotta get the pressure set, I gotta alert this, alert that.’”
“They communicate so well,” Mike Zimmer said. “Eric talks about being able to pass things off and his job in coverage is probably a little harder than Anthony’s, you know, the middle linebacker. They just communicate and they’re both really really smart. Barr usually handles most of the getting lined up and Kendricks and he likes to see-ball-get-ball.’’
While Kendricks was once compared by Mike Zimmer to someone who drank too much coffee, Barr is calm and in control.
“When things are scrambling around, often times he’s the voice of reason,” Harrison Smith said of Barr.
Fellow linebacker Cam Smith said he believes the reason Barr and Kendricks play so well together is because they have contrasting styles.
“It’s pretty funny to be around them the last three years and see how different they are as players but how well they compliment each other,” Smith told Purple Insider. “You have Anthony who is this physical specimen and is so strong and fast and extremely intelligent and you have this other guy who’s kind of a little spaz and so instinctual and does anything you need him to do and he’s really good at it. When I say really good, he’s really good at it. Everyone in this organization knows how good he is. I think that’s what’s cool, to be around them the last three years and be like, man, you guys got it figured out and are really good at working together.”
But Barr doesn’t believe Kendricks’s excitability is limiting when it comes to leading the defense, as he did last year (on an All-Pro track before getting hurt late in the year) and may have to in the future.
“I mean I think he’s always had that ability,” Barr said. “In college, he was the guy calling the plays and maybe that’s what he was used to. Coming into the NFL as a younger guy, obviously, you have to build that trust with your teammates and coaching staff to allow them to let you have that responsibility. He’s always been more than capable. Maybe it’s just new for the outside world seeing it more so than us because I think we all know he’s very capable.”
In the way that Paul Simon was very capable of song writing without Art Garfunkel and Scottie Pippen still averaged 22 points per game without Michael Jordan, certainly Kendricks has the capability to carry on as one of the NFL’s best linebackers even if Barr leaves after this year. But, like Barr said, it won’t feel right — for us or them.
“They’re really two great kids that love football,” Zimmer said. “I think they like being around each other.”
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Hopefully any future iterations of LB pairings will be more like Simon and Garfunkel than like Garfunkel and Oates (though I do find them most amusing)