Let's talk about the Vikings' timeline
Can the Vikings alter the course of their future on draft night?
By Matthew Coller
There’s a popular internet meme that shows a guy sitting at a table with a sign that says some type of statement and then, “change my mind.”
As it pertains to the Vikings, the sign at the table would say, “the Vikings are an eight or nine-win team, change my mind” and the guy at the table would be Vegas.
Prior to the draft, DraftKings Sportsbook has the Vikings’ over/under set at 8.5. There are 15 teams with higher win totals and 16 teams with lower win totals.
Certainly the oddsmakers aren’t perfect but they give us an objective snapshot of what the world outside of Minnesota is expecting of the team. (Purple Insider’s tandem will give you our win-loss pick when the schedule is released).
The Vikings have this week’s draft and the rest of the offseason to change minds.
That brings us to the natural follow-up question: What would it take to change the Vikings’ win total?
That question has a lot of other questions like: Should they approach the draft with the goal of reaching the over on 2021 or setting themselves up for 2022 and beyond?
What would either of these two approaches look like? Does it have to be one or the other or can it be both? How do things like job security, Kirk Cousins’s contract and star players’ primes play into the formula? Let’s have a look…
What would it take to be great in 2021?
Vegas doesn’t move lines easily. For example, when the Kansas City Chiefs traded for left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. on Friday, the Chiefs’ over/under didn’t change. Based on Wins Above Replacement data from Pro Football Focus, sportsbooks have been wise over the years not to react to things that happen with individual players outside of the quarterback position.
The Vikings may be thrilled at the signing of Dalvin Tomlinson and you can bet every cent he will be an upgrade at defensive tackle but PFF’s WAR values him at less than one-third of a win — over the last three years. And that’s with the boost given with new findings that back up Mike Zimmer’s reasoning for being giddy about Tomlinson.
The point isn’t to criticize the Tomlinson signing. He’s been a top 30 player at his position for the last three years and adds an intangible element as well. It’s only to say that the bar to raise win-loss expectations is rather high.
Heading into the draft, offensive line has been a popular position for mock drafters to assign the Vikings. We expect that an upgrade at left guard would change things significantly but the top two guards that were available heading into free agency Brandon Scherff and Joe Thuney each checked in at 0.31 WAR.
Now if the Vikings drafted a left guard who was as good as Scherff or Thuney right away, that might come close to an additional win because of how far below replacement level their performance was at the position last year. However, the odds of landing an instant superstar are low.
Drafting a guard or tackle still leaves the Vikings with an opening at one position. A tackle like Christian Darrisaw doesn’t solve the left guard problem and a left guard either bumps Brian O’Neill to left tackle or requires Rashod Hill to become a starter for the first time in his career.
Even if we break this thing down by actual pressures and suppose a rookie reduces the number of times that opposing defenders get in Kirk Cousins’s face, the Vikings’ QB was still responsible for the eighth most pressures allowed by himself last year, which limits how much a single lineman can improve things. Taking QB-caused pressures out of the equation, the gap between the third most pressured QB (Cousins) and 20th (Jared Goff) is about 1.1 pressures per game, per PFF data.
It’s safe to say that a single offensive lineman picked at 14 wouldn’t move the Vegas line. That might be different in the long-term view but we’ll get to that later.
Could any other draft pick do it?
Elite wide receivers push the needle farther. Chicago’s Allen Robinson was worth nearly a win by himself (0.81) last year. Very good receivers trend somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6 WAR.
It’s possible if the Vikings landed an instant star receiver, the needle would move. Last year the Vikings ranked 10th in passing Expected Points Added. The top four teams reached championship weekend. Three of the top four teams, per Football Reference, had the highest first down percentages on third and long in 2020. The Vikings were 18th.
Better pass protection would help in those areas too but as we looked at in this article, offensive linemen are among the slowest players to develop whereas receivers have the second best chance of impacting the team right away (behind only running backs).
Similarly, defensive ends generally struggle to make a difference right away. The Vikings have been oft connected to rushers like Jalean Phillips and Kwity Paye, who have high upside but probably wouldn’t instantly dominate.
The other position that moves the WAR meter the most is cornerback. In 2019, Richard Sherman was worth over one win by himself on the NFC Champion San Francisco 49ers. In 2018, Patrick Peterson was worth 0.59 WAR.
The issue with a corner pushing the Vikings’ fate one way or another is that corners historically emerge in their second seasons, according to the study. But rookie corners’ WAR per 100 snaps is not far behind wide receiver.
Drafting a corner might raise the ire of fans who wanted a lineman but for 2021 purposes it would be likely to give them more value, especially since there’s a possibility of getting the first corner off the board.
No matter which direction the Vikings choose to go in the draft, getting them to a 9-win over/under or higher would still take additional moves in free agency or trades. Free agents like Eric Fisher, Mitchell Schwartz, Melvin Ingram, Danny Amendola and Olivier Vernon have the type of talent to make a difference.
With $7.6 million in cap space, the possibility exists for the Vikings to combine an instant-impact first-round pick and add enough additional talent to be considered more of a threat in the NFC.
The future timeline
What if the guy at the table’s sign said, “the Vikings could be a Super Bowl contender by 2022, change my mind?”
In other words, what could the Vikings do in this draft to have a chance at entering 2022 with DraftKings Sportsbook placing their win total over 10?
Let’s have a peak at the teams who are presently over 10 for 2021: Baltimore, Green Bay, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, Buffalo, Kansas City.
What do they have in common? They all fall into two categories: Teams with great QBs and great rosters and teams with good QBs and great rosters.
We should start with the obvious: If the Vikings were taking the long approach to trying to build an elite roster, they would be thinking quarterback in this year’s draft because of the cap benefits to moving on from Kirk Cousins. The Bills, Ravens and Chiefs have all been able to make very aggressive moves in free agency and the trade market in recent years because they have QBs on rookie contracts. It stands to reason that had the Vikings been able to use an extra $30 million in cap space this offseason, their roster would presently be better.
But without at least a Cousins-level quarterback, there’s little chance at being a favorite. So aiming to replace Cousins with a cheaper version (even if that version is a little more athletic like Trey Lance or Justin Fields) would be the best long-view play, especially with fellow young players like Justin Jefferson, Cam Dantzler, Irv Smith Jr., Ezra Cleveland, Garrett Bradbury and whoever else might emerge from the 2020 and 2021 draft classes on their rookie deals.
Getting a top QB in this draft might not be possible though since five are projected to be picked in the top 10 selections. Then what?
The long-view approach then comes down to stacking the roster as much as possible with no concern over whether the player can bring a big contribution in 2021.
So let’s look at the depth chart for 2022 and see what we’ve got for potential needs:
— Cornerbacks Patrick Peterson and Mackensie Alexander are only on one-year contracts
— Harrison Smith and Anthony Barr are entering the final years of their deals
— The offensive line only has three starters (O’Neill, Bradbury, Cleveland) who can be projected to be on the team.
— Assuming Danielle Hunter remains a Viking, the right defensive end job is up in the air
— WR3 remains unclear
The future depth chart leaves a lot of potential options, from trading down with the aim of picking up more answers at positions with question marks, possibly taking the best player available regardless of position or picking an overall team direction and going strong that way.
Trading down or picking BPA need no explanation. What I mean by “picking an overall team direction” is to either try to be the Bills or the Rams heading into 2020.
The Bills stacked up their offense with aggressive additions, most notably trading their first-round pick for a star player in Stefon Diggs. He was the final piece in an offense that saw numerous other signings around Josh Allen i.e. Cole Beasley, John Brown, Daryl Williams etc.
The Rams went all-in on defense by trading for Jalen Ramsey. They finished with the best defense in the NFL in 2020. Both teams interestingly used their draft capital to acquire stars on the opposite side of the field from their head coach.
So if the Vikings could decide to either A) pour even more into the defense with hopes that it could soon be a No. 1 defense like 2017 or B) draft offensive linemen and weapons to load up the offense for either Cousins’s final year or the next QB.
More or less, they could take the view that in the NFL it’s better to be great at something than good at a couple things. Right now on paper the Vikings are probably good at a couple things.
Since we went over a lot there, a recap: Taking the 2022 approach into the draft could take a lot of different forms, some which overlap with the short-term approach. Drafting receiver DeVonta Smith, for example, would work on both levels. So would taking corner Jaycee Horn.
If we were adding up whether the long-view tracks have a better chance of working out than the short-term hope for instant success at an immediate position of need (aside from the crossover positions of receiver and corner), odds would seem to favor any of the future approaches.
The brass
If you want to figure out what a team is going to do, look at the job security of the people in charge.
The problem with judging the Vikings, however, is that security is tough to judge. Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman were both given three-year contract extensions last offseason. Would ownership pull the plug one year into those extensions? Could playing the long game extend their opportunity in Minnesota by showing that they are headed the right way? Or does the bar being set at the NFC Championship game after 2017 and the Cousins signing put them under the spotlight regardless of a reasonable timeline?
These are questions that the rarely-heard-from Wilfs know and nobody else does. There haven’t been any recent reports from insiders that suggest changes could be coming if the Vikings don’t return to Championship weekend or anything like that. However, it would seem that if they hit the Vegas under, selling progress and future would be pretty tough.
So Thursday night will serve as a pivot point for the organization. Drafts have changed their timelines before (see: 2015 and even 2020 with Justin Jefferson). They may need this year’s to do it again.
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Just my opinion:
This is the year that Zimmer has no excuses. Every year they have missed the playoffs there has been some tangible reason why. With them pouring their limited cap space into defense I can’t see ownership giving him the benefit of the doubt anymore. Whatever happens the draft war room needs to have this theme: What players can we draft to help Cousins play the best possible football each week? If they take that philosophy they will be fine if not we will see some wholesale changes sooner rather than later.
Agree with Finchy74. An extremely interesting draft coming up - and not just for the Vikings! As much as it pains me to say this - I personally don't think there is any team that is going to offer a 2nd rounder to move up to the 14th position though. Especially with it being a tougher year than normal to do comprehensive player evaluations.
Think the best we'll be able to do (assuming Sewell and Slater are off the board at #14) is trade down slightly, and pickup a 3rd rounder in the process. Then maybe - just maybe - we can package some 3's and 4's together to get a pick in the 2nd.
I do feel there will be some players available at #14 that other teams will covet - perhaps Jones or Lance, Horn, Parsons, Paye & Darrisaw for example. So if we traded down three spots and picked up a 3rd in the process - we could still have one of those five players. All of them would help in both the short and long term.
The 29th can't arrive soon enough!!