We suck. Our recipe for success is the worst in the North.

Lions starters players from the past two drafts:
Aidan Hutchinson
Kerby Joseph
Jahmyr Gibbs
Jack Cambell
Sam Laporta
Brian Branch

Packers starters from the past two drafts:
Quay Walker
Carrington Valentine
Romeo Dobbs
Luke Musgrave
Jayden Reed
Zach Tom
Rasheed Walker

Bears starters from the past two drafts:
Kyler Gordon
Jaquan Brisker
Braxton Jones
Tyrique Stevenson
Darnell Wright

Vikings starters from the past two drafts:
Ed Ingram
Akayleb Evans
Jordan Addison

For those of you questioning where Blackmon is, he didn't play 50% of the snaps and I wouldn't consider him a starter yet.

You look at that list, knowing that all three of those teams have more picks in the top 100 than the Vikings, and tell me the Vikings are going to somehow climb out of the cellar of the NFC North with who is doing our drafting versus who is doing theirs.  

Sure part of it comes down to luck but the same can be said of us every time we have had success recently too. The difference I am pointing out is the process or path taken for each of the teams to be where they are and the future outlook that comes with it. Detroit currently has a decent shot to win more playoff games this year than we have in the last 6 combined. They traded Stafford years ago for more capital and rebuilt the roster up. With those extra and higher picks they added much more young talent than we have over that span setting them up for a solid window here. The bears are a step behind but also traded players for draft capital and are now set with more than any other team in the league after being 1 win away from finishing higher than us in the division. There is a lot of potential with all of their assets to be building a lot on top of what they started showing this season. The packers traded Adams and then Rodgers for capital while drafting Love years ago, again forward thinking. They have a more challenging road but could also do what I mentioned for Detroit and win more playoff games than the entire Cousins era (and tie our total playoff wins since 2009). It definitely might not work out, it rarely does in the NFL. They all have shown an ability to plan ahead and set themselves up in positions where there is clear potential to contend though too. That's the difference and issue. 

How do we get there and to what level are we actually competing though? We can't get to true contender status that quick and the way we often choose to jus be "competitive" is by pushing issues down the road to win now (opposite of the forward thinking approaches described above). Keeping Kirk/Hunter and adding a FA or two while we have less than 30 mil in effective cap means a lot of $ moved to the future. That's exactly what got us here in the first place and is the issue. While a chunk of fans loved last season and threads were created about how those wanting to rebuild were wrong, how did that end? The reality is a lot of this fan base and those with $ on the line knew we were frauds. We were competitive but not a real threat in any way as the loss to the Giants helped show. 

That's the problem and where negativity is coming from more and more each season. The other teams in the division are just icing on the cake, we wouldn't care as much if we seemed to have a competent front office that seemed capable of realizing obvious issues and planning ahead to set us up to truly contend. Just competing here and there when you get lucky then falling off when you don't isn't a good strategy at all and more and more fans are realizing it. The longer this continues, the more negative fans will get the next time it doesn't work and we are back in the same position (needing to actually rebuild with forward thinking). Until we actually start to have a longer term plan and rebuild this roster the negativity will just keep growing. In 2020 it was maybe 15% of the fan base wanting to move on and realizing the issues described. I think we are at more like 50%+ now (this forum has even more seemingly ready to move on finally). The issue isn't that no one sees a path to be "competitive" in the way the Wilfs push for, it's that many are realizing constantly pushing for that and relying on pure luck means we likely never truly contend. Until we stop with the ridiculous circles to push to compete at the expense of our future the negativity will only keep growing over time. We need to have a legitimate plan and be forward thinkers like the teams described above, that's where a lot of the excitement and positivity truly comes from is having an actual chance to get there (even if all 3 are much more likely to fail than not). 

I am with you on a lot.  But if you are tired of being .500 and need a lot from this offseason for the future, then why are you bringing in Kirk for $40M?  

It’s not just an opinion, it’s the truth that the rest of the teams in the division got better the last half of season compared to us and in addition the bears are setting themselves up to possibly be pretty good next year depending on what they do with all their cap space and all their early draft picks they have. This team needs to get a real good look in the mirror and try to figure out how they can make changes to the roster and not just for next season but for future success. The way it’s trending is they are looking at 3rd or 4th place for the next couple years at least.