Murphy: Happy New Year, Vikings -- wait, is this new?
Brian Murphy writes about the familiar feeling of watching a Vikings season crumble
By Brian Murphy
The hockey parents gathered to ring in the new year at a St. Paul house party billed as “low key, two or three couples” only to end up 40-plus, including some adults who thought a 3:30 a.m. old fashioned was the right answer to fumigate the cigar stench for a patient Uber driver.
Monday morning’s regrets allowed us bad decision makers to reconcile Sunday night’s Vikings wake, which was two months in the making. We can finally snuff the denial coursing through the fan base since Minnesota and quarterback Kirk Cousins last played archrival Green Bay.
Nothing felt right in 2023 after sloppy home losses to Tampa Bay and the L.A. Chargers greased an 0-3/1-4 start to the 18-week grind. There were wildly entertaining twists and turns, moments of quarterbacking brilliance and defensive valiance bracketed by bad injury luck among other NFL hard truths that humbled a proud but perpetually overmatched team.
It would be peak Vikings to lurch into Detroit next week, gut the stewing Lions and watch their 3% playoff odds come up horseshoes to seize an unlikely playoff berth that, at this exhausting point, would be more regressive than redemptive.
Regardless, the Vikings are destined for a losing season and a seismic offseason which will define the nascent regime of general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell and impact the franchise for years.
We don’t know who their starting quarterback will be when the 2024 season kicks off in September. We do know it will not be Joshua Dobbs, Jaren Hall or Nick Mullens lest KOC is courting a malpractice lawsuit.
This just in: playing quarterback in the NFL is hard. It takes a special human being to absorb, execute, lead and thrive in the most demanding position in professional sports.
Playing musical chairs week after ugly week with not ready for prime-time players like the aforementioned trio is not sustainable no matter how many bright, shining moments Dobbs or Mullens could produce.
I’m sparing Hall the tar and feathers because seeing him implode during the first-half of that 33-10 loss to the Packers at U.S. Bank Stadium was like watching a dog trying to untangle from a blanket.
Hall had no idea how he got there and no tools to escape Green Bay’s ferocious pressure and the unjust expectations of saving Minnesota’s season. He did what any fifth-round pick from Brigham Young University would do in a must-win Week 17 game against a desperate and more experienced opponent. Just marinate in it like the rest of the revelers.
Packers-Vikings in prime time on New Year’s Eve with the postseason fates of both teams hanging in the balance. I can only imagine the collective BAC in the stadium was zero-point-Mardi Gras.
All of which made watching the abomination in the background of a mashed-up gathering of resigned Vikings fans and a handful of gloating Packers rubes less intense than it could have been. That kept the booze and conversation flowing without much distraction from the obligatory telecast.
Three consecutive losses in the pressure cooker exposed the Vikings’ hollowed-out rosters on both sides of the ball. All that handwringing about first-year defensive coordinator Brian Flores having both feet out the door for a 2024 head-coaching opportunity might have been for naught.
Flores was a miracle worker transforming one of the NFL’s worst defenses into a formidable midseason force that bought time for the Vikings to muddle through after Cousins tore his Achilles Oct. 29 at Lambeau Field. He also burnished his blitzing, plug-and-play credentials, turning low-level prospects into high-level performers in hybrid roles that perplexed opposing quarterbacks and coordinators – until injuries shredded Flores’ onion-skin depth.
That may still be enough for a defensive-minded owner to reward Flores with another No. 1 job. But it isn’t the fait accompli it was after his shutout win in Vegas.
Imagine Flores with a fortified unit, assuming the front office can allocate enough funds to secure and satisfy Cousins, wide receiver Justin Jefferson and defensive end Danielle Hunter before restocking.
Think about O’Connell having Cousins back in the fold and nurturing a potential top-10 pick at quarterback for future battle, much like the Packers did with Jordan Love before letting Aaron Rodgers skulk out of town with his love for thyself fully intact.
Watching a shirtless Cousins draped in his Kirko chains next to son Cooper as he blew the Gjallarhorn to jolt the crowd before Sunday’s kickoff was either a subtly staged farewell for the less-wooden, free-agent-to-be. Or a subversive bit of stagecraft that signals management’s intent to expensively run it back one more time with the one playoff-win QB.
New year. Same old conundrum.
Like the article but in addition to the 3 musketeers not being next year`s QB, with a top ten pick (unless we do the really stupid thing and win vs Detroit) the Mr. Chains will be gone as well (if SF does not win the SB, my bet is he is off to there)
With a top 10 pick fairly easy to trade up to picks 4-7 and then the writers get the joy of talking about QBOTF for a year
That would allow JJ money, Hunter money and then after a year of tons of dead cap rolling off a massive amount of cap