Retool or Rebuild for 2022?

The quick bounce-back (Sam)

Rapid rebounds are hard in the NFL when you change coaches and face a decision point with the roster as the Vikings do now. Dennis Green is the only Vikings coach to reach the playoffs in his first season, but since his dismissal in 2001, each successive coach has been forced to pick up the pieces of the roster they inherited. All of them have at least one playoff appearance to their name, but none turned things around overnight.

Mike Tice, for instance, wasn’t competitive until Year 3 and didn’t reach the playoffs until Year 4. Brad Childress needed until Year 3 to make the playoffs. Leslie Frazier’s Vikings bottomed out his first year and had as quick of a bounce-back as you could hope for with a playoff appearance the next year behind Adrian Peterson’s 2,000 yards, but the model wasn’t sustainable because of Christian Ponder’s weaknesses at quarterback. Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman made virtually all the correct personnel decisions in 2014-15 and won the division in Zimmer’s second year on the job.

If the Vikings’ next coach can make the playoffs in Year 1 with O’Connell, he’d be breaking the norm, and they’d probably have to make some risky decisions to get there. Year 2 would be impressive if the Vikings opt to pivot toward a rebuild, but based on the Wilf family’s desire to remain competitive and their propensity to spend generously, a second-year resurgence wouldn’t be ludicrous.

Let’s take a look, though, at what it would take to defy the odds and win in 2022, followed by Matthew’s more realistic outlook.

The one-year plan

Disclaimer: This isn’t a personal endorsement, but it’s one way to approach the upcoming season that would appeal to the never-tank crowd.

While it might fly in the face of responsible roster building, keeping Kirk Cousins around may give the Vikings a better chance to win 10+ games in 2022 — not overwhelmingly better, mind you, but if winning in 2022 is the ultimate goal, it’s a tough sell to argue the Vikings could improve at the quarterback position by signing a cheaper one or drafting a rookie. Would shedding Cousins give them more financial resources? Of course. But it would remain difficult to ensure immediate success even with an influx of free agency cash.

The keeping-Cousins theory might be that a similar offensive performance to the last two years would secure better win-loss results with an improved defense or even just a luckier one. The Vikings, for instance, scored the 14th-most points last season and missed the playoffs, while the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 15th-ranked teams made it. None of their defenses were lower than 18th in points allowed and all but one were 13th or better, while the Vikings finished 24th.

Cousins could sign an extension that knocks his salary cap hit down by $15 million, give or take, and reunites him with most of the same weapons for a third straight season: throwing passes to Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen, handing off to Dalvin Cook and mixing in Irv Smith Jr., K.J. Osborn and Kene Nwangwu for good measure.

If a Cousins extension gets the Vikings even with the cap, they could maneuver several other contracts to give them wiggle room. A Danielle Hunter extension could reduce his number significantly. Dalvin Cook and Eric Kendricks could restructure some of their base salary to clear up additional space, and maybe a veteran like Michael Pierce gets released. Through some combination of moves, the Vikings could get something like $20 million of cap space without having to weaken their roster too much, but they’d then need to figure out their unfilled spots and improve that defense we alluded to.

Even with money to spend, Minnesota would probably need to take some liberties and pray that in-house candidates like RG Wyatt Davis, LB Blake Lynch and S Camryn Bynum could assume starting roles and find a budget option at center to compete with Garrett Bradbury at center, preferably one with a better pass-blocking record.

With the rest of their $20 million, they could find a veteran corner like Ahkello Witherspoon, Charvarius Ward to line up opposite Cameron Dantzler.

Could the Vikings survive cutting one of their nose tackles as I suggested above? Probably, as long as Armon Watts continues to ascend. Then defensive end likely becomes a priority in the draft, and the Vikings could hope that things click with D.J. Wonnum, Kenny Willekes or Janarius Robinson in the interim. It wouldn’t be a fearsome defensive line, but having a healthy Hunter would help a lot.

Last year’s strategy of slapping band-aids all over the defense blew up in the Vikings’ face. Their 2022 plan, almost by default, would need to revolve around in-house talent taking big steps. It’s not foolproof, but it’s also tough to get much worse than last year.

Still, if you thought the depth was thin on the 2021 team, the 2022 win-now version of the Vikings is razor thin, so health would be imperative.

With different voices in the quarterback’s ear, a different defensive approach, good health and a touch of luck in close games, the Vikings could be a playoff team in Year 1. (They could also careen into oblivion with this approach, lose double-digit games and rue their financial situation. But that’s for another time.)

The long-term build (Matthew)

Sometimes the best way to demonstrate a point is with a visual, so here’s PFF’s grade chart on the Vikings’ defense from 2021:



Patrick Peterson, Mackensie Alexander, Xavier Woods, Anthony Barr, Everson Griffen and Sheldon Richardson are free agents. Armon Watts showed this year that he can be a situational rusher but he isn’t likely to be an every-down player. Danielle Hunter’s contract situation leaves his future up in the air. Harrison Smith is 33 years old. Eric Kendricks is 30. Not pictured: Dalvin Tomlinson had a solid 2021. Michael Pierce only played eight games and is a candidate to be a cap casualty.

Add it all together and you have one player under the age of 25 who appears to be a legitimate part of the future and that’s Cam Dantzler. On the bench, Cam Bynum may have a chance to start at safety. Chazz Surratt may have a chance to play linebacker. Either Patrick Jones, Janarius Robinson or Kenny Willekes may have a chance to play defensive end but there’s no evidence to suggest any of them can be starters. DJ Wonnum had eight sacks but graded 51st out of 54 starting DEs in pass rush win rate.

Bottom line: There is a ton of work to be done to rebuild the defense alone.

The last time the Vikings ranked No. 1 defensively, that unit took five years to put together, starting with drafting Harrison Smith in 2012. That group required hits on Smith, Xavier Rhodes, Danielle Hunter, Anthony Barr, Trae Waynes and Eric Kendricks in the draft.

That doesn’t mean it has to take five years to put together a competent unit. The Vikings’ defense was decent by 2015 after ranking dead last in 2013. But it’s not a one-year fix.

The offensive side of the ball isn’t perfect either. Two offensive line positions are in dire need of improvement, Adam Thielen is set to make nearly $17 million on the cap and Dalvin Cook is approaching the age where running backs start to slide. See the chart below, via ESPN:



That leads us to the quarterback.

The internet loves to argue about whether Kirk Cousins is good or not. I’ll solve the debate: Yes, he’s good. That’s really the wrong thing to focus on here. The Vikings will be asking whether he’s good enough to overcome a massive cap hit that will hinder the ability to fix all of the things named above. History would tell us that the answer is no. In Cousins’ seven years as a starter, he operated an offense that ranked above 10th in the NFL only once (eighth in 2019). And as the Vikings’ defense fell apart over the last two years because they were too cap strapped to rebuild it effectively.

Trading Cousins would give the Vikings cap space, draft capital and the opportunity to build around a young QB over several years. It has to be a long rebuild though. If we look at teams who landed good QBs in the draft recently, we find the Bengals in the Super Bowl in Year 2 of Joe Burrow, Kyler Murray’s team winning 11 games in Year 3, Baker Mayfield’s team with 11 wins in Year 3, Josh Allen’s club in the AFC Championship by Year 3, Lamar Jackson as league MVP in Year 2, Patrick Mahomes with a Super Bowl in Year 3, DeShaun Watson’s team with 11 wins in Year 2 and Jared Goff/Carson Wentz’s teams both reaching the Super Bowl within the first three years of their tenures.

Certainly there’s risk that goes along with drafting a QB. The Giants, Washington, Jets, Bears and Broncos were set back by draft misses. But the upside to hitting on a quarterback far outweighs the downside, which is that the Vikings would be in the same spot they sit right now — not close to a Super Bowl. At least in that case, they could draft another QB.

Drafting a quarterback makes the rebuild plan straight forward: Develop young players in 2022 and then head into the 2023 offseason with all sorts of cap space to spend in free agency.

Sticking with Cousins doesn’t make it impossible to rebuild, it just makes the needle to thread much more difficult. Cousins turns 34 in August and will likely command $35 million per year plus on a contract extension.

That’s not the type of solution the Vikings are looking for with Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell in place. They should be looking for a methodical build of the roster that starts at QB, then rests on drafting players to develop at key positions and striking at the right time in free agency when they are really ready to win.

If that’s the timeline for the Vikings, they have a chance to aim for the Super Bowl, not hope for the No. 7 seed in the playoffs.