Can Adam Thielen still help the Vikings?
The shockwaves from the Vikings' playoff loss to the Giants are still being felt, but it has nothing to do with last Sunday's game. Instead, the tremors are coming from a pivotal offseason where the fate of several fan favorites are up in the air.
Adam Thielen is one player whose status is unknown and social media posts by Thielen's wife, Caitlin, have fanned the flames, leading fans to speculate over their favorite homegrown player.
While the Vikings would love to see Thielen retire with the team, there needs to be a serious discussion about his future. The two things they need to find out are whether Thielen can still contribute and whether he would do so at a price that is worthy of his talents.
Before we go further, we can acknowledge that Thielen is a legacy player. He ranks third in Vikings history in touchdowns and receptions and fourth in receiving yards. His origin story is something that will be seen in a movie made for Disney Plus and his numbers would be even better if he didn't spend the first two years playing special teams.
Even with the entire state pulling for him, the past few years haven't been kind. Thielen caught 73 passes for 766 yards and six touchdowns this season but according to Pro Football Focus, his 1.08 yards per route run was his lowest since 2015.
If we consider Thielen was a special teams star during that season, this season's rate was well below his 1.63 YPRR in 2021. Furthermore, three of Thielen's lowest YPRR rates have come in the past four seasons. He had a 1.86 rate in 2020.
A reason for this could be that Thielen has suffered three lower-body injuries since Oct. 2019. A hamstring pull sabotaged his 2019 season before he sprained his ankle and nearly slashed his Achilles' during a practice prior to a playoff game in Jan. 2020. He then suffered a high ankle sprain in Dec. 2021 and aggravated the injury a few weeks later, requiring offseason surgery.
While Thielen didn't miss a game due to injury this past season, he didn't look as explosive as he averaged 2.7 yards of separation according to NFL's Next Gen Stats. By comparison, that number ranked tied for 54th among wide receivers and was well below Jefferson (3.1) and K.J. Osborn (3.4).
Entering his age-33 season, it's possible that Thielen's best days are behind him. Since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, only 30 players age 33 or older have posted 70 catches or more in a season. Only 28 of those players have been able to post a 1,000-yard season and only seven players have scored 10 or more touchdowns in a season.
If the Vikings want to be optimistic, they can look at Larry Fitzgerald's 2017 season with the Arizona Cardinals and Julian Edelman's 2019 season with the New England Patriots.
Fitzgerald's career was in limbo during the early part of the 2010s as he averaged 72 catches for 845.3 yards and 5.3 touchdowns per season from 2012-14. While the fellow Minnesota native was nearing the dreaded "washed" label, Bruce Arians revitalized his career by moving him into the slot.
Fitzgerald took off, posting three straight 100-catch, 1,000-yard seasons. The last of these glory years came in 2017, when Fitzgerald caught 109 passes for 1,156 yards and six touchdowns at age 33.
Edelman was in a similar situation prior to the 2019 season as he had just one 1,000-yard season in three of the past four years. Edelman exploded the following year, catching 100 passes for 1,117 yards and six touchdowns as one of Tom Brady's favorite targets in the slot.
Considering Thielen hasn't had 1,000 yards or caught more than 74 passes in a season since 2018, he could point to this as a reason for a bounce-back. Both players spent most of their time in the slot, however, where Thielen played just 31.3 percent of his snaps over the past four seasons after playing 56.6 percent of his snaps in the slot during the 2018 season.
This leads us to the elephant in the room.
According to Over The Cap, Thielen will count just under $20 million toward the cap in 2023. Paying a 33-year-old showing signs of decline the 13th-largest cap hit among receivers isn't a good idea. It's even worse when the Vikings are sitting $24.4 million over the salary cap.
It's a similar situation to where the Vikings were a year ago when they opted to give Thielen a raise and kick $2.25 million into a void year in 2025.
The Vikings have to find a way to get Thielen's cap hit down, but it appears he isn't willing to go down without a fight after his comments during a radio interview with KFAN's Paul Allen earlier this week.
"I have a lot of ball left," Thielen said. "I feel great. I feel like I can play at a high level...I would love to finish my career here and retire a Minnesota Viking...but I also know that this is a business and there's going to have to be some business decisions made."
Those comments sound eerily similar to Kyle Rudolph, who showed up to TCO Performance Center wearing a hoodie that said "Lots of Game Left" weeks after Irv Smith Jr. was drafted in 2018.
Adam Thielen coming in with that same energy that Kyle Rudolph had after Irv Smith Jr. got drafted. pic.twitter.com/Y6Y0wXXtGu
— Chris Schad (@TheRealCrishad) January 16, 2023
Rudolph won that battle, getting a four-year, $36.1 million extension prior to training camp. The Vikings wound up regretting that decision on the field as Rudolph caught 131 passes for 1,335 yards and 11 touchdowns over his final three seasons before being released in Feb. 2021.
Thielen is four years older than Rudolph was during that standoff and is the same age as Randall Cobb of the Green Bay Packers, who is currently mulling retirement. Either way, someone is going to have to blink before we know if Thielen will return to the Vikings next season.
