What Does it Take to Win it all With a Non-HOF QB?

And yet this team has been set up like that multiple times and can never win. In other words try a different approach besides the formula of not having a hof qb. How about getting one.

Good work, and interesting results... 3 elite defenses, 2 very good ones, and 2 below average.

Looking at the 2011 Giants, finishing 11th in scoring with the worst run game and worst O-line in football is pretty crazy. Eli must have had an amazing year... well, he certainly moved the ball with almost 5000 yards and a very health 8.4 YPC, but 16 picks and 8 fumbles. Only 25 sacks, though! Very good at evading pressure for having such a bad O-line. Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz went nuts that year.


Eh, that seems like a rash conclusion. I see a team that caught fire and saw its defense play out of its mind from Week 16 to the SB (nobody put up more than 20 points on them in those 6 games), and then Eli and the passing game caught fire and put up 20+ points in all those games. Lots of luck and momentum. You'd have to watch those games to find out if there is any reason to suspect cheating, but sometimes the stats don't tell the whole story. Sometimes bad teams make turnarounds midseason and go on a run. Definitely not a blueprint to copy to win a SB, of course.

Having a QB on a rookie contract so we can have super stars around them is huge. Look at the Vikings the last 15 years TJack on a rookie contract in '09 allowed us to afford the Williams Wall, JA, Hutch and of course Favre. In 2012 since Ponder was on a rookie contract we were able to build around him with better pieces around him despite him being a bust. 2015 Teddy on a rookie contract allowed us to build a good defense. Granted AP was the common factor in all 3 of those examples but we could pay him a higher contract then most wanted because our QB didn't have a 30-40 million dollar contact.

Look at Russell Wilson won a SB on his rookie contract the team hasn't been as successful since he got his money. Same with Mahomes his contract might start hurting the Chiefs in other areas once his big cap hits start

I had a column in my table for QB playoff performance but removed it, because I was worried it would lead to talking less about the teams those QBs played with and more about Cousins himself.  

Let's address what you posted above though, since I think it is important to note that 4 of those 7 SB winning teams needed great play from their QBs in the playoffs to win it all.  Most QBs do not play better in the playoffs than they do in the regular season.  The competition is much better and it is just much harder to do well in that spot if you are not a great QB (which is why great QBs win it all more often than non-great ones).  Kirk Cousins is no different in that respect.  His passer rating is 86.6 in the playoffs and he is a flip of a coin away from possibly being 0-3 and averaging 16 points per game in that spot.  Counting on that to change in the 9th season of a QB's career is kind of nuts.  3 playoff games in and the best I think we can hope for is a game like NO, where if the defense does its job really well, the opposition's defense is riddled with injuries, and nearly every thing goes our way, we can win in the playoffs.

Realistically, we probably need to win it all like TB, Baltimore and Denver did.  Shutdown, turnover inducing defense that is difficult to run on.  That is how we will get a SB with our current QB.  

While I agree the competition is better in the playoffs, it's difficult to explain how suddenly decent (not great or HOF-caliber) QB's suddenly elevate their level of play in January in those instances though. It's not like 2012 Ravens played horrible opposition that was riddled with injuries - they faced Indy in the Wild Card Round under Andrew Luck in his rookie year, Peyton Manning & a loaded Broncos defense (#1 seed that year in AFC) that would go on to win the Super Bowl a few years later and then Tom Brady & the Pats in the AFC Championship. 

Eli faced road games at Tampa, at Dallas (#1 seed led by Romo and a solid defense) and then at Green Bay (Favre's last game as a Packer) while then facing Brady in the Super Bowl. In 2011, they faced a poor Falcons team (by playoffs standards) in the Wild Card Round, beat the top-seeded Packers team coming off their Super Bowl season and then vs. a rather solid 49er team under Alex Smith/Harbaugh while again beating Brady and the Pats in the Super Bowl. The Eagles I'll give ya a little bit they were the top seed and beat Atlanta in the division round and the pounded a hapless Viking team in the NFC title game while then outdueling Brady and the Pats in the Super Bowl. It is interesting that in all 4 of those instances, the QB had to go through Brady and the Pats to win the Super Bowl - certainly not a easy thing to do. 

If we're talking about the Vikings path in 2021, we probably won't be an elite defense so the path involves not going 1-5 to start the season and then "getting hot" in the 2nd half of the year and riding that momentum through January like Eli, Flacco & Foles. While the Vikes probably won't have an "elite" defense, they potentially play up to the level of those '07/'11 NYG teams, the '12 Ravens and possibly even the '17 Eagles teams which were all very good that year -just not '00 Ravens or '02 Bucs level "elite". 

Post 2021, yeah, I'd like to try and find a HOF-caliber QB and that probably involves the Vikings breaking their tendencies during the Zimmer era and really going after QB's in early/middle rounds of the Draft (excluding Teddy in 2014, of course)...and since I have yet to see Zimmer and Rick break their tendencies, it's probably going to take a regime change at one or both of those positions for that to occur....

...so while we're currently in the Zimmer/Rick era, the 2 choices are A) solid QB's "getting hot" in January, or B) having a '00 Ravens / '02 Bucs "elite" level defense....and option A is probably the more realistic of the two...

"A" is a likely impossibility that we can just hope will happen while "B" is an unlikely possibility the Vikings can actually work towards. One you have control over, the other you are hoping for a Ford Focus to turn into a Porsche 911.

The contract is a secondary factor. This team would be a SB contender if the drafts from 2016-2019 hadn’t stunk. It isn’t Kirk or his contract. If we had actually hit on our 3rd round G, 1st round CB, and/or our 1st round C, we’d be in great shape. Kirk actually makes up for a bunch of mis-steps by Rick.