Are the Vikes contenders?

To make it? Sure. If Hurts regresses or gets injured it's basically the 9ers with who knows who at QB, the Cowboys and the Lions. The latter two haven't exactly racked up a lot of postseason success lately, though both have a better shot on paper than Minnesota.

To win it? Hell no. KC and Cincinnati are a cut above any Team in the NFC save for Philly.

No. They're not good enough to contend for the SB, nor bad enough to contend for the top pick.

I’ll try out their standards. However, I will start by pointing out that everything they say is retrospective, so it’s necessary to do some projection on unknown players.

1) 7 High quality players
I get the same 6 easy ones as them: Jefferson, Darrisaw, Hockenson, Cousins, Hunter, O’Niell. They say Jefferson is the only blue chip (with the others being red chips… which whatever, both count). I might argue Darrisaw and Hockenson into the blue category as they are still ascending, but since both count, that doesn’t really matter.

I see Byron Murphy as the best path to a 7th, but Marcus Davenport has the athletic profile to be one as well. I’m not optimistic about Harrison Smith regaining form, but it’s at least a possibility in a Flores defense. There’s also a few long shots, in descending order of likelihood: Asamoah, Addison, Oliver, Cine, Blackmon, Evans, Tonga, Osborn, Booth Jr.

There’s enough potentially ascending players that 7 seems very makeable.

2) An Elite Passing Game
Yes. Not because they were elite in 2022, but because of the returning pieces and upgrades. The pieces here are very strong:
Elite WR1
Elite Tackles
Elite TE1
Very Good QB
And there are obvious improvements over a not elite but still good 2022 group.
Addison > 2022 Thielen
Oliver > Mundt
2nd Year Ingram > Rookie Ingram (the weakest link)
2nd Year O’Connell Playcaller > Rookie O’Connell Play caller (probably).

Overall, the Vikings have all the pieces for this.

3) An elite pass rusher
Hunter. Davenport is good enough to be a complimentary pass rusher. They say Davenport is a maybe, but even if he outperforms, I don’t know if he can be elite without a strong compliment (he’s always had one in Clown Jordan with the Saints). This is a simple “No” without Hunter.

4) A Solid offensive line
The scarcest players and most difficult to acquire are Tackles, and the Vikings are good there.

Cleveland’s pass protection grade was similar to his first 2 seasons, but his pressure allowed spiked. Cleveland allowed more hits in 2022 (20) than 2021 (6) and 2020 (8) combined, this was nearly true with total pressures as well (53) vs (34) + (23) = 57. So even if Cleveland doesn’t get better, there reason to believe his pressures allowed could come down. Likewise, Bradbury was OK last year, so can be good enough to be part of a “solid” group.

Ingram is the potential weakness and I wrote about him here: 2023 Offensive line - Page 5

So this isn’t a given by any means, but there are pieces are in place to make this a reasonable possibility.


5) A Solid Pass Defense
There are too many unknowns here to project this box as being checked. The only upside is that the players and coaches most responsible for the horrible 2022 pass defense are all gone. The only player who is gone who was a real strength in the pass defense is Za’Darius Smith, but he has a near 1:1 replacement in Davenport. The pass rush should be a strength with good rotational guys. The Vikings have a glut of talent at safety. So it’s really just CB that is the open question.

6) A Secondary way to win on offense
In 2022 The Vikings had 4 wins in which Jefferson had less than 100 receiving yards. Those games along with the leading secondary option were:
Vs Lions (Jefferson had 3/14): Cook had 17/97, Osborn was 5/73 + the game winning TD.
Vs Cardinals (Jefferson had 6/98): Cook had 141 total yards and 1 TD.
Vs jets (Jefferson had 7/45): Cook had 20/86 + 1 TD
@ Bears (Jefferson had 4/38 in limited action): Osborn had 5/117

I’d feel a lot better about this if the Vikings hadn’t released Cook because the path to winning without Jefferson in 2022 was about 2/3 Cook + 1/3 Osborn. I think Addison or Hockenson will need to step up in a big way here because I don’t view Mattison as a RB that can win a game. Fortunately, Addison and Hockenson both have the ability to pick up some games in addition to the 2 per season Osborn seems to be able to save.

The Vikings will need to develop a bit to hit this one, but they have the pieces to do so.

7) Cheap Players as Strong Contributors
This is a certainty. Jefferson and Darrisaw alone would make this true. However the Vikings cheap contributions go way beyond this. In addition to massive value from Jefferson and Darrisaw, the Vikings have:

Addison – Cost $2.5M – Thielen was worth $12M in value last year (per OTC), even at half that value, Adison is a bargain.
Asamoah – Cost $1.2M – He’ll fill in a lot of LB snaps at a bargin
CB2 and CB3 – Whoever wins will return massive plus value even If they’re bad because Booth Jr is the most expensive one and he’s less than $1.1M.
KJ Osborn – Played himself into a performance based raise to $2.8M, but that’s still way under his value.

Those 5 players stand to add $30-40M in incremental value even if they don’t turn into stars, and that's on top of something like $50M in value from Jefferson and Hockenson.


Overall
Of their 7 criteria, the Vikings can easily check 3 (passing offense, pass rusher, cheap value), and another 2 are very easy to project (7 high quality players + secondary way to win). There is evidence another is developing (offensive line).

That leaves only one complete unknown: the pass defense. This will make the early season development of Akalyeb Evans, Andrew Booth Jr. and Mekhi Blackmon a very interesting plotline in the contender story.  Blackmon is especially interesting here.  I don't expect a rookie CB to step in early, CBs is more likely a position where a vet (even not a great one) starts and the talented rookie rotates in before taking over.  This is doubly true in OTAs where the goal is to install a defense, usually using vets who who the process and getting rookies practice reps as possible.   If it's true that Blackmon was playing with the 1's in OTAs, he would be far ahead of all but the highest performing rookies. 

To see the kind of difference one CB can make, look at Seattle.  The Seahawks were supposed to be one of the worst teams in the league in serious contention for the #1 overall pick.  Their pass defense was putrid in 2021 at 31st in the league.  They hit on Tariq Woolen in the 5th round as a plug and play rookie CB who came in and lead the team in both passed defended and interceptions. The Seahawks improved to 14th in pass defense and Woolen would count as one of their 7 high quality players.   Any one of Blackmon, Booth, Evans could provide this unexpected boost (with Blackmon as the early leader).   

Agreed, though I find it concerning that only one of these players is on defense and we are considering trading him.


I agree with your logic, they have the coaching and personnel to make this an elite passing game.


Patrick Peterson was legitimately good last year, and Tomlinson was the only one consistently creating pass rush in the interior, and neither have true replacements on the roster. And Davenport has never played up to Smith's level nor even the usual amount of snaps he's played, while he has the athletic upside to be a 1:1 replacement, so far in his career he is absolutely not, or he would have received a much richer deal in free agency. Murphy is a decent starter, but has never played up to the level that Peterson did last year.


I can't agree at all. Only Osborn has played enough snaps and made a positive enough impact - every team in the NFL that hasn't traded their 1st/2nd round picks away also have players on cheap deals. So basically every team in the league minus the Rams and 49ers get a point here, as they also have 1st-2nd-3rd rounders who have played zero snaps but have the upside to start and be a great value if they aren't terrible.

Basically my thoughts. After watching 9ers Cowboys playoff game, and just philly in general in playoffs, you saw how far away we are just in the trenches alone. Which is huge and I have been advocating for years now to build from trenches out.  I think we will actually be a better team than last year, probably not record wise. Basically the questions you have to ask is, will a second year in the offense, Kevin calling plays, and addition of Addison help that much? On the defensive end the addition of Flores, and unknowns of CBs. I could possibly see a path of competing in the NFC because it is just top heavy. We would have 0% chance in an AFC playoff. 

While I can see a possibility the team is overall better, it is unlikely and it won't be because the talent has gotten better. It will require the coaching to improve significantly on both sides of the ball, with the team getting worse talentwise at RB, dline and in the secondary. Possibly at WR and at LBer with Hicks being terrible already and only getting worse with age and Addison not being a guarantee to be better than Thielen even on the decline, especially as a rookie.

KOC improving in year 2 and Flores being an elite defensive mind is the only way this team improves at all and with the reduced talent even with those guys being better keeping the status quo will be difficult.

First place schedules are so overblown. The Vikings, Lions, Packers, and Bears have 14 of 17 opponents in common. Yes, the Vikings have to play the 49ers, Eagles and Bengals...I guarantee you, one of those teams-at least-will be significantly worse than last year and playing them isn't going to seem like such a chore.

You think the Rams interdivisional/interconference opponents are upset that they had to play them just a year after they won the Super Bowl? No, because the Rams were awful. What a team did last year has very little bearing on what they will do in 2023. It is just as likely that the Cowboys, Seahawks, and Ravens the Lions have to play will provide them all the trouble they can ask for...as any one of those teams is likely to be as formidable as the Vikings foes.