The Vikings, Eagles and another crossroads
In a matter of months, the Minnesota Vikings’ organization had numerous opportunities to make decisions that would prepare them for the future. At each fork in the road, they chose the same route they have always traveled: Desperate flailing to remain relevant. Meanwhile, the Eagles made several wildly unpopular moves that sparked their run to the 2022 Super Bowl.
No, I’m not talking about last offseason. We have to go back farther than that.
When the Vikings got on the plane to head to New Orleans for their Wild Card round matchup in early January 2020, there was a feeling that major changes could be coming. Pundits (current party included) had spent the season wondering if the Vikings were a legitimate contender when they played one of the easiest schedules in team history and came up short every time significant road blocks — such as the Packers in Week 16 — had been placed in front of them. It was one of those years where each much-anticipated game ended with disappointment for Vikings fans and simultaneously turned the temperature up on head coach Mike Zimmer.
Prior to the Vikings-Saints playoff game, there was an NFL Network report that the Vikings would consider trading Zimmer to the Dallas Cowboys, who had just parted ways with Jason Garrett. Not to mention that receiver Stefon Diggs made his unhappiness known by skipping practice following a frustrating loss to the Bears early in the season and subsequently acknowledging that there being “truth to all rumors” that he wanted out.
Frequent users of OverTheCap.com also determined that the Vikings keeping together a team that had gone to the NFC Championship game in 2017 beyond 2019 was going to be darn near impossible. They sold their soul to Roger Goodell to use every cap trick in the book in order to fit quarterback Kirk Cousins onto a roster that had given out big extensions to Diggs, Eric Kendricks, Danielle Hunter after the 2017 season and Anthony Barr following 2018. But the door eventually busts open on every team that tries to sweep dead cap space into the closet year after year.
Considering the lack of buzz around the Vikings heading into the 2019 playoffs, the Saints must have been shocked when the NFL sent the playoff game script. Drew Brees wouldn’t be able to handle the heat? The Vikings would win a coin toss in New Orleans? Cousins, who had been chided during that season for not being “clutch” enough, would make two of the best throws of his life in overtime?
The Vikings’ win was nothing short of a spectacular performance by all involved. Zimmer showed the world he could out-scheme his former colleague Sean Payton in Brees’s house and Cousins proved that he could shine on a big stage.
It was a great day for Vikings fans, too. It wasn’t exactly revenge for 2009’s Bounty Gate game but slamming the door on one of Brees’s final chances at another ring gave folks watching back in frozen Minnesota some warmth.
On the same day, January 5, 2020, the Philadelphia Eagles were having the opposite experience as the Vikings. They produced nine points at home against the Seattle Seahawks in a game where Carson Wentz got hurt early and Josh McCown had to throw 24 passes in relief. Philly walked off Lincoln Financial Field looking at only the tatters of the 2017 team that won the NFC Championship 38-7 on the same turf.
Their once-inspiring quarterback Carson Wentz had put together two middling, banged-up seasons in a row and was about to see his cap hit jump from $8 million to $28 million within the next several seasons. Their leading receiver was a former QB named Greg Ward, who had 24 yards against the Seahawks. Their once dominating defense ranked 15th in points allowed.
The following week, the Vikings got bludgeoned by the San Francisco 49ers, gaining just 147 total yards.
That offseason, the two teams made decisions that would send them on very different paths. The Vikings’ 2017 roster indeed came apart. Xavier Rhodes, Everson Griffen, Linval Joseph and Trae Waynes hit free agency. Diggs got the trade that he wanted. While those things might normally signal a rebuild, the Vikings did not take that track in any other way. Instead they gave an extension to Cousins that lowered his immediate cap hit, extended Zimmer and GM Rick Spielman and ultimately traded a second-round pick for a pass rusher to replace Griffen. In the draft, they picked corners to replace the starters and Justin Jefferson to take over Diggs’ WR1 spot. In camp, they traded a second-round pick for Yannick Ngakoue.
When the Vikings started 1-5, they sent Ngakoue to Baltimore for pennies on the dollar but did not move anyone else. They won just enough games, including a meaningless final-week matchup with the Lions, to bump them down the draft board and out of contention for a move-up to acquire Justin Fields (as they reportedly attempted to do).
The Eagles picked quarterback Jalen Hurts, after the Vikings’ brass laughed at them on a Zoom for taking receiver Jalen Reagor the previous day.
Draft analysts and local reporters thought the Eagles were picking “the next Taysom Hill.” Were they trying to out-smart the league by taking a bit player?
The Athletic wrote an article called “My Brain Hurts.”
“They need another starting cornerback and would have been perfectly justified in going with a safety,” one analyst wrote. “But the one position that didn’t make any sense at this spot was quarterback.”
Andy Benoit of Sports Illustrated (at the time) wrote: “This is a strange pick by a ready-to-win-now team that could still use another wide receiver and needs a potential starting linebacker.”
The blog Bleeding Green Nation did a fan poll and 61-percent of those voting handed out an F for the Hurts selection..
These folks didn’t see the meta. Kevin Cole of the Unexpected Points newsletter (formerly of PFF) did.
Cole tweeted: “Jalen Hurts wasn't a good pick for the Eagles, he was a great one. Faulty, binary thinking on franchise QBs clouds public perception of the pick. Hurts increases optionality and the likelihood of elite play at the most important position in football.”
The Hurts pick was part of a bigger strategy that ended up turning the Eagles in the right direction long term. The 2020 season was a miserable run that saw the Eagles start 3-4-1, stand pat at the trade deadline and finish with head coach Doug Pederson pulling Hurts in the final game to improve the team’s draft stock.
After that, they were in cap jail, so GM Howie Roseman moved on from Carson Wentz by trading him to Indy and parted with veterans Zach Ertz, Alshon Jeffery and DeSean Jackson. They stacked draft capital with a first-round pick from the Colts, who missed the playoffs with Wentz, and traded down in 2021 to get a 2022 first-rounder.
In the end, Philly struggled through one terrible year in 2020 to bounce back quickly around Hurts. Getting their cap in shape allowed for moves like the acquisition of receiver AJ Brown, signing of defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, who had 11 sacks this year and additions of Haason Reddick (16 sacks), CJ Gardner-Johnson via trade (six INTs), James Bradberry, Ndamukong Suh and Linval Joseph.
The Vikings’ decisions in 2020 led them down a path that resulted in Kwesi Adofo-Mensah taking over a team with severe cap issues and an ownership what wanted to find out whether the players’ finger pointing at Zimmer was right. So they ran it back for the fifth straight year, extended Cousins again, made bargain signings, added void years to deals that will be paid later to people who aren’t on the team anymore and prayed to the Football Gods for good luck, good health and for Kevin O’Connell’s culture plans to take hold quickly.
In finishing with a 13-4 regular season record, the Vikings could certainly argue it was all worth it. But their weaknesses were revealed down the stretch and they finished with an Expected Win-Loss (per Pro-Football Reference) of 8.4-8.6. In the playoffs against the Giants, the taped-together defense came apart and the season ended.
Meanwhile the Eagles, whose Expected W-L was 11.6-5.4, crushed the Giants in the Divisional round and cruised in the NFC title game against the 49ers following Brock Purdy’s elbow injury.
Now the Eagles look like a team that’s going to compete for the Super Bowl for a while and the Vikings look like a team that went back in time to the same crossroads they faced three years ago.
Robert Johnson might suggest the Vikings make a deal with the devil to go 11-0 in one-score games and barely suffer any injuries again in 2023 but that seems unlikely, especially when they’re set to face Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts and the 49ers on the schedule.
Does that mean they should try to emulate the Eagles’ 2020/2021 franchise reset? The road less traveled by the Vikings could make all the difference.
One thing that’s worth noting, however, is that the Eagles did not tear it all down. Players who were on the 2020 team that will play in Sunday’s Super Bowl include Miles Sanders, Dallas Goedert, Darius Slay, Josh Sweat, Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Jason Kelce, Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata, Quez Watkins, Avonte Maddox and a handful more.
The accumulation of cap space and draft capital within the context of a QB on a rookie contract allowed them to load up talent around an already strong foundation. The Vikings similarly have Justin Jefferson and Christian Darrisaw as star foundational pieces but they do not have the resources to put a complete roster around them.
Letting Cousins play the role of 2020 Wentz would be the fastest way to get on that path. Moving on from him now would seem absurd after a 13-win season but they can let his contract play out, allow the exit of older stars and plan for the rookie QB in the future.
As the Eagles showed, it doesn’t need to take 10 years to get back to legitimate contention, it only takes recognizing the crossroads, as the Vikings failed to do in 2020.
If they handle the offseason the same way as last year and many years before, to paraphrase Robert Frost, we might be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence.
