Retool or Rebuild for 2022?

With the Minnesota Vikings’ first moves on the chessboard finally on the record, fans can finally look at how new general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell intend to steer the longship. For now, it’s a philosophy of a “competitive rebuild,” which attempts to balance the desire to win now and the need to build long-term success.

That’s not unfamiliar for Vikings fans. It’d be easy for a cynic to take a look at the new regime and argue that it’s doing the same thing as the old regime — but with bigger words and a positive attitude.

One could also contend that the Vikings are following the same strategy, but with a better brain trust executing it. That view puts quite a bit of faith in improving the performances of both the front office and coaching staff.

Whatever the case, there’s little question that the Vikings need help and that personnel has to be part of that equation. But the dominant mode of thinking has been that the team either needs to mortgage the future in order to pursue short-term gains and a run at the Super Bowl — perhaps impossible given their current commitments — or tear everything down to the studs in favor of building and securing success in the longer term.

Adofo-Mensah disagrees. He characterized the Vikings’ approach to free agency differently.

“I think when people look at teams, they sometimes do it in a very binary way,” he said. “They ask, ‘Are you either all-in or tearing down and rebuilding?’ And I don’t really look at the world that way. The way we look at it is we’re trying to navigate both worlds, we’re trying to live in today and tomorrow — or the competitive rebuild.”

That’s not a new concept for sports fans, whether it comes from the “retool, not rebuild” euphemism that has been thrown around for teams in every sport or more unique language like Pete Carroll’s “win forever.” For the most part, it’s not particularly compelling. While it avoids any lost ticket sales that come from the depths of restarting a team from scratch, it often doesn’t build a resilient team.

Indeed, the approach of staving off a swiftly closing playoff window might be what got the last regime fired, and some fans will be frustrated at identifying this problem only to see it come back with a new face.

And to be fair, the Vikings’ early foray into free agency hasn’t led to much change. Adding star pass rusher Za’Darius Smith adds a new dimension that the Vikings haven’t had the past two years, but that’s the only addition that seems like a true upgrade.

With Jordan Hicks functionally replacing Anthony Barr and Harrison Phillips acting as a one-for-one swap with Michael Pierce, the defense has mostly treaded water. Still, there’s hope that the second wave of free agency and the draft can replace three starters at cornerback and that Camryn Bynum can replicate Xavier Woods’ play at safety.

At the same time, the personnel on offense hasn’t budged. The expectation is that Irv Smith’s return from injury will functionally replace Tyler Conklin’s production at tight end, while the Vikings have done little more than signing a backup offensive lineman for an offense critically lacking in interior pass protection.

Instead, Minnesota has doubled down on its existing roster, extending or restructuring Kirk Cousins, Adam Thielen, Harrison Smith and Danielle Hunter. These moves have saved cap space in 2022 but offloaded that money into 2023, 2024 or 2025. It’s a classic win-now move.

And through some lenses, that makes sense. It’s fundamentally easy to convince yourself that this team isn’t that far away from being good. The bare-level statistics tell us that the Vikings have an above-average offense and a poor defense. With some injury luck going in the other direction, that defense can be improved pretty rapidly. At the same time, a more modern approach can bring the offense up from top-10 status to top-five consideration.

And a top-five offense with an above-average defense is a formula that should put you in the playoffs, especially in a seemingly weak NFC. But that obscures some larger questions.

Even if Hunter can play a full season, it’s unlikely that Za’Darius Smith and another nine games of Hunter would result in four more wins than last year, especially with potential downgrades at cornerback. On top of that, it shouldn’t be a given that the defensive staff can replicate what Mike Zimmer was able to do on that side of the ball. An offensive upgrade that comes from a change in coaching might very well accompany a defensive slump for the same reason.

And it would be a mistake to treat every “top-five offense” in the same way. If there’s a ceiling on the offense for whatever reason, a better opposing offensive unit, like those you’d be likely to find in the playoffs, could blow its doors off.

But that’s just one side of a competitive rebuild, reload or revamp.

The other element of straddling the “rebuild” and “stay competitive” line is to find ways to secure future assets. And the Vikings haven’t really done that. They haven’t gotten to the “rebuild” portion of their competitive rebuild. They’ve kicked the can down the road on important contracts, but they haven’t found ways to add to their draft capital or add younger players to develop into critical roles.

Tight finances
When asked about the difficult salary cap situation, Adofo-Mensah said the Vikings are still looking for ways to improve the roster.

“I got a lot of hungry people in personnel, man — it's great. Honestly, it feels like my old trading days, where I was responsible for taking the risk, but you had people giving you ideas all the time. You had a research and strategy group, you had third-party services, and you're just looking for ideas. It's ultimately my job and Kevin's job and Rob's job to sign off on that final idea, but we just love ideas, we love information.”

As we’ve written here before, the Vikings don’t have many methods remaining to clear cap space besides restructuring Dalvin Cook or Eric Kendricks.

If the Vikings don’t have the funds to bring in additional free agents, so they’ll be forced to show a lot of belief in the young players currently on the roster. The names Camryn Bynum, Cam Dantzler, Armon Watts, Wyatt Davis and Blake Lynch come to mind.

“We’re focused a lot of the times right now on seeing what we have in this building,” the GM said. “What’s on campus? We’re trying to see, ‘Hey, if everybody is their best self, as they mature in their career, what can that be? What does that mean when we have them?’ So we’re ongoing with that. We like some of the youth we have. We think guys have a chance to play well. This is going to be a little bit of a different scheme, so it’s not exactly relatable to what they were doing previous to now.”

Odds of Barr, Peterson returning?
For the same financial reasons listed above, it’s going to be hard for the Vikings to bring back a couple of veterans from last season, but it sounds like one is more likely than the other.

If the Za’Darius Smith signing wasn’t foreshadowing enough, Adofo-Mensah virtually put to bed that Anthony Barr is a long shot to return to the Vikings for a ninth season.

“I had a conversation with him the other day. That’s going to be a tougher situation to navigate,” Adofo-Mensah said. “Never say never. Obviously there are things salary cap related with acceleration and things like that that made that kind of a challenging deal, but again, he’s somebody, you walk by in this building and see the Man of the Year [display] every day when you used to walk in, so those decisions are tough.”

Barr’s strong 2021 likely keeps his price tag too high for the Vikings’ taste, especially with dual edge rushers on the roster in Smith and Danielle Hunter. Minnesota is more desperate for cornerback help, which could bring them back to Patrick Peterson, who remains unsigned. Adofo-Mensah didn’t close the door on Peterson.

“He texted me the other day,” Adofo-Mensah said. “Pat Pete's a great person, a great player in this league for a long time. I was in his division and that was always a tough day going against him. Again, we're trying to be solutions-oriented about everything we do here. You want to make sure you respect a player of his caliber, his expertise in this league, but also the reality of the situation we're in from a salary cap standpoint. Again, those conversations are ongoing and we're trying to work through those problems as we can.”

Peterson played at an $8 million salary last season and would probably seek similar compensation. If the Vikings can’t afford him, there are a plethora of cornerbacks remaining on the market.

Hunter sticking around
One day after the Vikings restructured Danielle Hunter’s contract to ensure his place on the roster in 2022, Adofo-Mensah expressed a desire to keep him around long-term.

“He's a really great player so you don't just move on from great players very easily,” he said. “He's someone that's been in this league for awhile, produced at a really high level. Great person. It's awesome to be in this league and the relationships you start building. He's in Europe and we're talking about different travel and things we've done. He's somebody we're excited to have back in the fold and every option is on the table. He's a great player, so he's somebody that you always want to consider bringing back under contract.”

Hunter would be in line for extension talks with a successful 2022 campaign.

How good can this year’s team be?
Clearly Adofo-Mensh wanted to avoid any Super Bowl-or-bust expectation setting in his commentary but the word “playoffs” didn’t come up either. He was asked what type of ceiling that the team might have considering its “competitive rebuild” status.

“We try and focus on the pursuit, the journey,” Adofo-Mensah. “We call it the ‘joyful pursuit of excellence’ – focus on five feet in front of your face and really just take it on faith that that’s going to end up where you want to be, with the confetti coming down with the conference championship, or the Super Bowl, whatever it is. So I try not to speak in terms of those things. I just focus on what we can do every day to get better.”

In terms of how much better they might be from last year, Pro Football Focus’s Kevin Cole has been tracking teams that have made the most roster improvement. The Vikings stand in the middle by his metrics, having yet to made strides by gaining Harrison Phillips, Jordan Hicks and Za’Darius Smith but losing other players that made up a large snap share.

Ownership’s involvement
One thing that has been speculated about is whether the Vikings didn’t go into full rebuild mode because their owners nixed possible trades involving the team’s stars.

“They’re so passionate about this sport and the Vikings,” Adofo-Mensah said. “They’re curious. This is their baby. They have questions, they want information, so I provide them with updates whenever I can. As always, they just want to make sure that people are being intentional about what they’re doing, thoughtful, so I try and give them updates, ‘This is how we’re seeing it. These are the options we have at our disposal, and this is what we can do and this is what we can’t do.’”

Improving Cousins’ game
The Vikings haven’t done anything yet on the offensive side in free agency, so barring a stunning trade (ya never know!), the offense appears that it’s pretty close to what it’s going to be when they kick off in September. Adofo-Mensah said that he believes they can get more production out of Cousins based on improving efficiency in small ways. "

“You’re looking for three plays a game, right?” Adofo-Mensah said. “Can you get them in second-and-6 versus second-and-11? Can you eliminate some of… the bad things that can happen… We always talk about winning on the margins and things like that. You can win on the margins from personnel basis by putting him in better situations from a scheme basis, putting him in better situations.”

He continued…

“The cool thing about football is that it’s so complex, interconnected. Small things can have big outcomes. And so 80 percent of the games are within one score all those things. So we’re just searching for those margins those little things to get us where we want to go with Kirk and the rest of the roster.”

Rich via email: I have a friend who suffers from toxic positivity (legitimately) and it bleeds into his Vikings fandom. I mentioned that the team was worse today than it was at the end of 2021 and he countered that the "massively" improved front seven has "fixed" the leaky secondary. Now, I've already ripped this apart because , duh, how couldn't I, but I would like to read a breakdown from someone who covers the team about why this argument wins the gold medal in the Olympics of stupidity.

By PFF’s metrics, they are the exact same team, having not gained or lost any WAR from last year. That stands to reason considering that they subbed out Griffen/Pierce/Barr/Woods/Peterson and subbed in Phillips/Hicks/Smith and haven’t changed anything else. Nothing has happened with the secondary, so I’m not sure how that’s fixed. Right now the only corners on the whole roster are Cam Dantzler, Harrison Hand, Kris Boyd and Parry Nickerson. The front seven could be much better if Smith/Hunter are healthy all season. Big if. The offensive line and weapons remain the same with the same questions. As it pertains to your friend, it’s OK to look for the good in things but we gotta live in reality. These last few weeks have been tough on people who wanted to see an overhaul and see Adofo-Mensah’s vision for the team start to take hold and instead got another Spielman type offseason.