About Next Season...

I'm at the point I know this team is not Super Bowl capable and neither will it be next year.

It doesn't matter who the coach is for next year. First year coaches often get that spike of performance as a first year coach, but what do you expect to get much better?

This roster is limited by old people on the defense and we need to find new superstars.
Offense needs to become more dominant to over-compensate for the defense.

For anyone throwing out hope and potential for next year without saying "Rick has to go", well,... sorry.

If Rick is here next year, I'll watch less Vikings than I do this year regardless of coach, because it simply won't matter.
This year I've already barely watched anything live because of family commitments and nice weather.
Very glad I'm handling my autumn in the most enjoyable way possible so far.
As whether turns cold, this will get depressing though.

Go GOPHERS!

I think the only way real culture change is going to happen is going to have to come from ownership. They need to look in the mirror and say are they doing this right? The whole stability little change thing has netted stability in being average or not meeting goals year after year. So do they want to continue on the proven mediocre to fails expectations path and keep the stability there or do they think with some risk on changing the regime including gm, they can go for a chance at greatness or possibly fail expectations. Because the book has long been written on spielman and zimmer. After all the years with them both here we know what they are capable of.

Well value means is different in contexts. So if you are talking about draft picks coming back for say like a guy like Anthony Barr. Well he is a vet who has made some pb’s and even though probably not in his prime anymore, can still be effective defender when healthy. So if someone was willing to give up say a 4th round pick for him and we take it. A typical fan might say well we didn’t get much for him we lose the trade. However you can look at it in different ways. #1 value draft pick wise is how other teams feel about giving up picks wise. So if we aren’t offered anything more than that then that is his value around the league draft picks wise. 2. This is the key to me, getting off a big contract. Sure we may take a hit on the cap next year with losing his salary however after that we are free and clear of his contract. 3. Gives fresh blood an opportunity to play and build experience. This is just an example, but you see value can mean different things.

When you say "significant value", are you inferring draft picks or players in return for trading someone? If it's the latter, without looking at data I would tend to agree - you don't often see great swings in value when both teams involved in the trade are trading players.

However, I would argue that you still see significant draft capital being traded in exchange for a player. 

Here are some 2021 trades that involved either some "significant" draft capital or a "significant" player, IMO:

- ATL traded WR Julio Jones & 6th Rd pick to TEN for 2nd Rd (2022) and 4th Rd (2023) 
- BAL traded OT Orlando Brown, Jr., 2nd Rd (2021), 6th Rd (2022) to KC for 1st Rd (2021), 3rd Rd (2021), 4th Rd (2021) and 5th Rd (2022)
- NYJ traded QB Sam Darnold to CAR for 2nd Rd (2022), 4th Rd (2022) and 6th Rd (2021)
- PHI traded QB Carson Wentz to IND for conditional 1st/2nd Rd (2022) and 3rd Rd (2021)
- DET traded QB Matthew Stafford to LAR for QB Jared Goff, 1st Rd (2022), 1st Rd (2023) and 3rd Rd (2021)

While it's debatable what sort of draft capital or player compensation the Vikings could reasonably expect in return for players like Cook & Thielen (their contracts would come into play, as well), there is some "significant" draft capital being thrown around if there's a strong need out there. KC had a strong need to rebuild their OL and were willing to part with a decent amt of draft capital to help with that process in their trade for Orlando Brown, Jr. The LAR obviously had a need for a stronger QB than Goff and gave multiple future 1st Rd draft picks to DET to get him. 

As far as trades being "duds", I'm not sure I fully agree there. I would contend the Vikings certainly received solid value in 2020 when they traded Diggs to BUF - the rec'd Justin Jefferson who has turned out to be a very good WR on a cheap, rookie contract for 4 years. I think the Cardinals received a solid return when they acquired WR DeAndre Hopkins for basically just a 2nd Rd pick (2020) and RB David Johnson. 

If the Vikings fall to 2-4 after this weekend's game in Carolina, I think it's reasonable to conclude that the chances of the 2021 team making any serious postseason runs are remote, and with the trade deadline approaching on 11/2, it would also be reasonable for the team to start taking a hard look at not just the coaching staff, but the roster and start looking at 2022+ and possibly moving people if the team believes they could get reasonable value in return. Now, the personnel in the Vikings Front Office performing those trades (ie, Rick Spielman)? It's certainly fair game to ask the question of whether or not the team would want him being the one to maneuver any firesale, but regardless of who it is, I believe it's at least possible to get decent quality in return. As far as which player and what sort of quality return you could expect for that player - that would require further data analysis of recent trade activity and what their contract situation is. 

I still can’t believe what Detroit got back for Stafford. That is a great deal for them. If they had a smart gm (which I don’t think they have) they could really do well with all that draft capital.

You nailed it.

This team is in a bad spot right now. Not good enough to challenge, too good to be horrible.
Only spot worse is where Cleveland was for a decade and where the Giants appear to be right now where you're bad, change coaches and GM, and are still bad.

Good news with that however is you know your team is going to be bad, and you just wait for the upside, but you don't have to waste time thinking they'll be good, only to sit and hope for a 2nd win to occur against Detroit to stay near 0.500.

We've got crappy owners in the fact that now that they have their cash cow, they don't need a winner and fan support to get them their cash cow.
They used us and got their stadium and got TCO, and now they are concerned about cashing checks.

I still laugh at the Vikings fans who say "Oh, the WILFS ARE GREAT OWNERS!  THEY GOT US A GREAT STADIUM".
To be that Naive.