What Coulda Been

Len via email: In my HS/college years, the Vikes were ridiculed for an inability to "win the big one." Now it turns out that those years of futility were the golden years. Do you think we will ever ascend to that futility again?

It’s a lot harder to be good for as long as the Purple People Eaters were today than it was then. Back in the day teams could stay together for a long time and have success year after year until everyone got old. Now teams are often very different from year to year. It’s really unique to see the 2019 Chiefs and 2020 Bucs carry over as many players as they did from their Super Bowl seasons. So unless the Vikings land the next Mahomes/Brady/Manning/Roethlisberger, it’s pretty unlikely they’ll have anything like what they did in the late 60s into the 70s. But if you’re asking whether they can ever win a Super Bowl, the answer is yes, of course. The Saints were cursed before they won. The Chiefs were the definition of a good-not-great franchise that never got over the hump for years and years and then they landed on Mahomes and boom. The Vikings have gotten close so many times that it has to click someday. When that happens…well…if I knew that I’d charge a lot more for Purple Insider.

@mn__TWINS__GUY Haven’t gotten to listen to all of the pods this week so sorry if you’ve already addressed this but what if the Vikings drafted Lamar Jackson and didn’t sign Kirk Cousins?

I had a number of people say Mike Zimmer wouldn’t have gotten the most out of Lamar and I couldn’t disagree more. Teddy, Sam, Case and Kirk all had their career best years under Zimmer. He may frustrate people with the run-first thing but the Vikings have the fourth best team QB rating since 2015. The only teams that are better are Seattle, KC and New Orleans. Lamar probably would have sat behind Case Keenum or Teddy for a year in that scenario and then taken over. My guess is that he would have still ended up in a Kubiak style system, which would have been great for Lamar. He’d be able to roll out and make plays and throw passes to Diggs/Thielen rather than Willie Snead and Marquise Brown (when healthy). There’s no guarantee Jackson would have taken them farther in the 2019 playoffs but he might have gotten them a couple home playoff games that year. Even with some shortcomings in his throwing (though Baltimore is 11th in team QB rating since 2018), Jackson would cost ballpark $25 million less than Cousins and give them a dynamic element that simply isn’t there with Cousins. Bottom line: It’s hard to see that going any other way than being great. I don’t think we can rip them for not drafting Lamar but it’s a big What Coulda Been that tends to get overlooked.

@billyisradical Onterrio Smith was having a pretty good start to his career until he whizzed it away

Not to take anything away from anyone, but there’s a handful of beat reporters who could have averaged 4.5 yards per carry with Randy Moss at receiver.

@warleyowl What could the Vikings have done with the picks given up for Bradford, and what impact might this have made to the roster? Anyone they might have traded up for?

Well, the Eagles picked Derek Barnett, who coincidentally strip-sacked Tom Brady to win the Super Bowl because of course he did. Otherwise they might have decided to pick an offensive lineman rather than signing Riley Reiff/Mike Remmers. Garrett Bolles and Ryan Ramczyk were the two guys taken after the 14th overall pick. The Vikings love to pick corners and the two selected in that ballpark were Adoree Jackson and Marlon Humphrey. Of course, there were two decent quarterbacks in Mahomes and Watson taken right in front of the 14th pick that the Vikings might have looked to trade up to select if they didn’t have Bradford.

@alstrain Who are the best "what coulda been" draft steals? Mid-round guys who you though would thrive and just flamed out. Two of mine are from the same draft in 2014. I thought Scott Chrichton and David Yankey would be key players on playoff team. Nope.

When it comes to anybody picked past the second round, I’m always skeptical. One guy I did think might become something was Rodney Adams. He was a pretty exciting playmaker in college and I figured he could take on the role that everyone wanted Cordarrelle Patterson to play. Instead he just didn’t seem to really enjoy football and he retired a year later. The other guy I remember talking about being a very good mid-round pick was Cam Dantzler. I’m certainly not writing him off — he showed flashes last year — but the fact that the Vikings went out and got three starting corners makes you think they have some concerns about whether he can stay healthy in the NFL at his size.

@purplebuckeye To play off the 'if Kramer didn't get injured' hypothetical: Do the #Vikings win SB VIII, IX, or XI if prime Tommy Kramer is QB'ing those teams instead of Tark? Tarkenton always played extra conservative in those games, TK would not have.

Obviously there’s no definitive way to say no here but I’m not sure I can be talked into that one. They got whipped in those Super Bowls. The only one where they might have had a shot was against the Steelers in ‘74. Even then, that Steelers defense gave up 13 points per game that year. Tommy might have been more aggressive but it’s pretty likely that wouldn’t have mattered against the No. 1 passing defense in the league. Maybe TK would have at least made it more entertaining.

@robdn1 Have you seen or has anyone done an analysis of the Vikings Super Bowl losses to figure out why they didn’t win at least one?

I haven’t but I think my previous answer pretty much tells the story. They pretty much just got smashed by really great teams. The Raiders went 13-1 in ‘76 and pounded the Steelers in the AFC title game. The ‘73 Dolphins gave up 11 points per game and killed the two teams they played in the playoffs before facing the Vikings and Kansas City scored 359 points and allowed 177 the year they beat the Vikings. As great as they were, they kept bumping into teams that were some of the greatest ever.

@ramseykincannon The year Teddy’s knee exploded, we traded our first for Sam Bradford who won us way more games than Shaun Hill would’ve. We gave up pick 14. Mahomes went 10 and Watson went 12. Where do you think we would’ve been if we didn’t trade that pick and drafted one of those two QBs?

I just want you to know that I’m not saying, “in the Super Bowl” just to rub salt in the wound. The answer is in the Super Bowl. Even if Mahomes wasn’t Mahomes in his first year, the roster was so good that it made Case Keenum into a star, so they would have had a shot and then in 2018 and 2019, the holes that ultimately sunk those teams could have been patched up with the extra cap space they would have had from either player being on a rookie deal. The fact that the Foles Eagles, Goff Rams and Garoppolo 49ers made the Super Bowls between 2017 and 2019 makes for a pretty strong case that the Vikings would have gotten to one of them with an elite QB. No guarantees but it’s hard to argue otherwise considering Mahomes went to the AFC Championship game and then Super Bowl, Super Bowl and Watson won a lot of games with pretty mediocre teams. And again, Thielen/Diggs with these guys would have been pretty unstoppable.

@dsun28 Idk how many think about this, but I was thinking about it the other day: how does the trajectory of the Vikings change had they drafted Carr over Bridgewater in 2014? Carr was drafted by the Raiders just a few picks after Bridgewater. I’ve wondered about this recently

I’m not trolling when I answer again with… in the Super Bowl. I think Carr and what Bridgewater was becoming are probably pretty similar but if Carr is healthy on the 2017 club they have a great chance. Carr is definitely better than Keenum and has never had receivers like Thielen/Diggs. If they didn’t win in ‘17, the Vikings would have ended up in a very similar spot to what they have now with Cousins.

@yougotmossedx What could've been for the 2017 Vikings if they take Michael Thomas over Laquon Treadwell

You can definitely do this with a lot of draft picks where you wonder about any star who was picked farther down the line, so I’ve never really held this one as a What Coulda Been. But to answer the question, they might have squeezed one more win out of the 2017 team and had home field advantage throughout the playoffs. I’m not entirely sure though because the ‘17 offense didn’t really struggle with the WR3 issue since Diggs/Thielen were so unstoppable that year. That seemed to come about more in 2018/2019 where teams adapted and Thielen got hurt in ‘19. In that case, they definitely make the playoffs in 2018 with Thomas and maybe win one more game (Kansas City, possibly?) in 2019.

@pff_Sam What if the Vikings had only given Mewelde Moore the chances he deserved, who would have inducted him into the HoF?

Sam Monson is a massive Mewelde Moore fan, just so everyone knows. It is kind of odd that they seemed to only like using him as a receiving option rather than a consistent runner. It’s not what you want to hear, Sam, but if he gets more chances he’s probably just another running back.

@_Born2Early_ If Dalvin would have never tore his ACL in 2017, would Vikes have been in the super bowl?

I don’t think so. Nobody was changing the NFC Championship game outcome. The Eagles were so much better on the defensive line than the Vikings’ O-line and we’ve seen that Cook can be slowed when that’s the case. Plus they got a lot out of Jerick McKinnon and Latavius Murray that year. The running game wasn’t an issue after Cook got hurt.

@dan1736848443 Is Robert Smith in the Hall of Very Good?

I’d say so, yes. The only modern era running backs with better yards per carry were Jamaal Charles, Mercury Morris, Gayle Sayers, Barry Sanders, Derrick Henry, and Napoleon Kaufman. He was a good pass catcher out of the backfield too. There are so many running backs who could fall into that “Hall of Very Good” category but I think he’s deserving.

@dan1736848443 How many championships would the 49ers have if the Vikings didn't trade everything to the Cowboys for Georgia Senate candidate Hershel Walker?

That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Dallas still would have been really, really good, so let’s not give the Vikings all the credit for their Super Bowls. But the 49ers had a team in ‘92 that went 14-2 and lost 30-20 to Dallas in the NFCC game. That team might have won instead. That year the 49ers were first in offense and third on defense. So I’ll go with one more Super Bowl…but also I’m of the opinion that there has never been more talent on the field in history than when the 49ers and Cowboys played in the early 90s. It was right before free agency and expansion and there were GOATs everywhere.

@bladdage After historic 1998 offense, OC Billick leaves and QB coach Chip Myers tragically passes away. If either of those guys remains into 1999, do they get another elite year out of Cunningham?

And they still ended up with the fifth best offense in the league. I’m going to say no on getting an elite year out of Cunningham. I think he just didn’t have it anymore after ‘98 and when he got chances to play for other teams after that it was pretty similar. Might they have squeezed a tiny bit more out of the offense? Possibly. But they ran into a buzz saw with the Rams in the playoffs. I’m not sure there’s anything anyone could have done differently to change that outcome.

@flipmazzi My question: Who could the #Vikings have drafted if they didn’t trade for Sam Bradford? What positions needed help and which prospects were available in ‘17? Would they have been worth a full season of Shaun Hill in ‘16?

Yeah, I guess when I was answering something similar in a question above I failed to consider that they could have been drafting a lot higher than 14th if they didn’t trade for Bradford. If Shaun Hill plays, there’s no way he makes it through the entire season. We would have gotten a big dose of Taylor Heinicke late in the year and they maybe end up 6-10 or so. The answer seems like it would have been Mahomes or Watson but if they had some other idea at quarterback, it’s possible the end up with Christian McCaffrey or Lenny Fournette. You can’t say they wouldn’t have been crazy enough to draft a RB in the first round when they traded up for one in the second. Also possible they pick a bleh receiver like Mike Williams. Remember they tried to get Alshon Jeffery in free agency that year. Marshon Lattimore would have worked out nicely. Going into 2017 they weren’t sold on Waynes or Alexander.

@jacoblaxen I think it is fair to wonder what that 2017 season would have been like with a healthy Bradford instead of Keenum. Was throwing dimes in the NO opener

This one gets debated a lot because Keenum was a barrel of fun when he was on but I’ve always felt Bradford would have been even better. There’s a lot of not great portions of Keenum’s 2017 that we overlook because they won. Bradford probably beats Detroit in Week 4 and maybe Carolina in Week 13. Maybe he loses one here or there that he shouldn’t have but I think overall the offense ends up being one of the best in the NFL behind a fully healthy Bradford. It wasn’t just a random Week 1 game where he played well, it was that entire training camp that he took command of the team. I think that would have made a difference.

@oldnorse What would’ve been if a 5th round pick and a UDFA hadn’t turned into 2 of the top 10 receivers in the league by 2017?

This is a great question because usually the Vikings are on the victim side of these what-ifs but they’ve had a lot of good bounces too. The 2015 draft in which second, third and fifth rounders all turn into superstars is so outrageously improbable that it’s one of the best drafts in history. If they don’t land on Thielen/Diggs, 2016 probably isn’t an 8-8 season, it’s more like 6-10 and the 13-3 season never happens. Certainly defense has driven a good amount of success that the Vikings have had during the Zimmer era but I’m not sure anyone is more responsible than Thielen/Diggs.

@vikesfan1930 Do you think the Vikings win the SB in 2009? I feel like they do, Colts were overrated and the offense would of been run heavy... I'm thinking by 2TDs....

I don’t think so. The Colts were 14-2 that year with the No. 2 passing attack in the NFL and they put up 460 yards against the Jets in the AFCC game. Here’s an absolutely bananas stat from that team: Peyton Manning was sacked 10 times all year. That’s bonkers. Their defense was also solid. With Brett Favre’s ankle the way it was, I don’t think you can say with any degree of certainty that they would have beaten the Colts.

@dynastygopher What if the Vikings had made Mike Tomlin the highest paid DC to keep him with the Vikes and eventually replace Childress.

He probably handles the 2010 season better than Childress did. I’m not sure there’s another significant difference. Maybe he starts Gus in the ‘08 playoff game instead of Tarvaris? He would have earned more respect from the players but overall Chilly was 39-35, which seems about right for the talent they had during that time.

@jeffintokyo1 There is only 1 burning what if question and it is the obvious one because of the huge affect and of course it is the ultimate curse of the Vikings.... What if Teddy`s leg does not fall literally in practice...What are the obvious and not so obvious ripple effects

The obvious ripple effect is that they might have had an even better chance at the Super Bowl in 2017. They had to spend money on Sam Bradford that could have gone elsewhere. Maybe they end up landing Alshon Jeffery instead of Philly getting him, for example. The not-so-obvious effect was how many other QB situations were altered by his injury. Sam Bradford ends up elsewhere. The Vikings never get Kirk, which means maybe he would have been a Bronco or Jet? If he’s a Jet, someone else drafts Sam Darnold and on and on. You can track that thing all over the league.

@tjkill81 What do you think would have happened if Vikings had drafted Jevon Kearse instead of culpepper?

I still think they lose to the Rams in the playoffs but that ‘99 defense faded from where it was in ‘98. They went from sixth to 18th in points allowed and 30th in passing yards allowed. Kearse might have helped because he was so good right away and definitely in the subsequent years when their defenses were abysmal. At the same time, maybe they end up having to keep Jeff George around and draft another QB later or sign another one off the heap and it’s probably a pretty rocky ride.

@vikesfan1930 Do you think if the Vikings drafted Micheal Thomas, instead of Treadwell that the Vikings win a SB or Diggs or Thielien or another Vikings player ? get traded ( not assuming the Diggs drama happens ?)

I don’t think they would have won the Super Bowl if they drafted Thomas but there are definitely a bunch of situations that I think they would have had a little better chance to beat good teams over the last few years. It ultimately would have become too expensive to keep all three and the band would have been broken up. But maybe if he’s there in 2018 the Vikings are in the playoffs.

@smccullough5 For each of the NFC Championship Game loses the Vikings have endured since the 1980's, in the What Coulda Been World, do they win any of them?

If we’re ranking their best chances of winning the Super Bowl, I’d go with 1998, 1987, 2001 and then 2009. The Broncos in ‘98 were better than the ‘87 Broncos but the Vikings were such an unstoppable machine in ‘98 that I think they would have given Denver a really great fight. In ‘87 it’s harder to say if Wade Wilson would have kept the magic ride going. You can talk me into the 2001 team putting up a better showing than the Giants did against the Ravens. As I mentioned earlier, I just don’t know if Favre is healthy enough to beat Manning in ‘09.

@tomspeicher What if the Vikings hired Pete Carroll in 1992 rather than Denny Green?

They’d have a new coach by 1993? Carroll has taken a very good situation in Seattle and made a lot out of it but I’ve never been convinced he’s a really exceptional coach. Had he gotten hired and coached the Vikings for a long time, they’re likely still a mid-pack type team. I do think he also might have drafted Moss though.

@benjackson0812 How do you think a Zimmer and Brett Farve relationship would have gone??

I think Zimmer would mostly have loved him. Zimmer is one of the most competitive people you’ll ever meet, so he would appreciate that Brett was willing to leave it all out there. There’s a misnomer that Zimmer doesn’t like QBs. He got along great with Bridgewater and Bradford. I think Keenum terrified Zimmer because he knew the bad INT would someday come. And with Brett I’m sure some of the turnovers would have scared him too but Favre’s interception rate isn’t nearly as bad as it’s made out to be. He threw picks on 3.3% of passes, which is 0.3% behind Dan Marino, 0.2% behind John Elway, 0.2% behind Kurt Warner, equal to Daunte and ahead of Warren Moon and Jim Kelly. It’s just that some of those picks came at the worst times. If the Vikings had Favre during the Zimmer era, they’ve got a few more trips to championship weekend.

Thomas via email: What do you think RGIII's career would have been like had he not torn his ACL his rookie season and rushed back for his second year? Still think he would have flamed out in Washington eventually or would he have developed better as a passer and potentially still be starting somewhere today? What would the ripple effect have been on Cousins and his career had RGIII held on to that starting position for years and years?

My guess is that Griffin III would have been pretty good over the years even with some bumps on the road. He was so reliant on being able to break huge runs or heave the ball downfield that there’s some variance that comes along with that but Mike Shanahan was running a super QB friendly offense with him that I think would have kept working and they would have been really competitive in 2015 and 2016 when the WFT rosters were very good. Kirk probably would have gotten a chance somewhere because of Shanahan’s appreciation for him.

I say both of those without a ton of confidence though. Griffin might have turned out a little like Colin Kaepernick where the NFL got ahold of his running and then his passing ability wasn’t quite enough to keep him at the top of the league. He also seemed like a guy with some personality issues and that’s enough to unravel things. And with Kirk, there are lots of backups who never get their shot.

@robbqthibault Could /would Jim Marshall have been inducted into the @profootballhof if the Vikings win one of those SBs? I have 2 football wishes before I check out of this life: Vikes win a SB and #70 gets his honor(b4 he checks out). #skol

This one isn’t a long answer: Yes. 100%. Jim Marshall belongs in the Hall of Fame and if he had a Super Bowl ring, he’d be in.

@smccullough5 Lots of chatter that the Ryan Ramczyk contract sets the floor for a Brian O'Neil extension. This seems insane to me but even if this isn't the floor, how does this impact the extension and other off-season plans?

O’Neill is good but he isn’t Ramczyk. There’s a big gap between Ramczyk and Lane Johnson and the rest of the right tackles in the league. I would expect O’Neill to be closer to Jack Conklin or La’el Collins. Conklin got essentially a three-year, $42 million deal with $30 million guaranteed and Collins has a five-year, $50 million with $20 million fully guaranteed. That’s probably where he lands. Like they did with Dalvin Cook last year, they’ll push some of that into the 2021 cap but it won’t keep them from making another player move if they want.

Matt via email: There was some speculation that a part of Hunter’s holdout might have been that he was unhappy with how the Vikings or Zimmer handled his injury (a la Trent Williams). He shied from discussing the injury at his press conference but seemed to imply more frustration with a nebulous injury as opposed to team decisions, handling or communication. Any clarification on this?

Without much coming from Hunter in his press conference, it’s hard to say with any degree of certainty the extent of frustration that he has/had concerning the injury. What I make of the present contract is that he’s either making very good money in 2022 here or he’s hitting the market because the Vikings don’t want to pay him. All the other stuff, we can only speculate about.

Yeah, he also ended up as the butt of many jokes because of his pay... which, what was he supposed to do, turn it down? I talked to Bradford in 2019 about this and he wonders how 2017 would have gone just as much as Vikings fans do...so I think you can be empathetic toward that even if he made a decent dollar