View from Krypton: No QBOTF (Or, Kirk Again, Naturally)

I have shared this opinion in various threads but I’m starting to sound like a poster with the same opinion over and over. So I’m going to lay this out once, discuss it here if anyone wishes, and leave it alone. It got so damn long, no offense taken if no one reads the whole novel.


The most popular prescription for the Vikings this offseason seems to be, “Draft a Quarterback of the future (QBOTF). Come on, Kirk hasn’t managed to win a Super Bowl, he’s going to turn 36 during training camp, coming off serious injury, he always wants a big contract, and all our backup QBs sucked and we haven't had a great young QB for two decades!"

That’s all true. But fans of unsuccessful teams always want one thing: CHANGE. Backup QBs are often the most popular player on a football team, and since all our backups have crashed and burned, the most popular player on the Vikings is currently someone we might draft next April. So, is the expectation of an approaching QBOTF based on logical assessment of the actions and preferences of those owning and running the Vikings – or is it wishful thinking by fans?

Let's start with the reasons I have heard to support the idea the QBOTF is coming soon.

1. “Kevin O’Connell was hired to choose and mold the QBOTF.”
Well, easy first question: how do you know? Because he is young and was an OC and played quarterback himself? Those are speculative, at best. OTOH, look at KOC’s actual background, coaching from Washington (where he met Kirk) to the Rams. He has primarily worked with veteran QBs, aside from the very poor rookie year of Dwayne Haskins and Jared Goff’s last year in LA (when Goff was a 26-year-old who already had 4 years in the NFL and didn’t have a strong year with KOC around).

So what is KOC good at? If anything, it’s “Making a pretty-good veteran QB into an even-better QB” by surrounding him with better weapons. That was the achievement, with Matt Stafford, that made KOC a prominent coaching candidate. It’s what he completed about a month before the Wilfs hired him. Were the Wilfs thinking about that – or about how he selected and mentored Haskins to a 2-5 record as a rookie 3 years earlier?

2. "The Wilfs must want a young first-round QB."
Is that based on their great experience with such QBs? Let’s see…they bought this team believing it had an amazing young QB, Daunte Culpepper, drafted in the 1st just a few years earlier. Within a year, that QB had embarrassed the franchise with the Love Boat scandal and torn up his knee so badly his career was never the same. They later tried the 1st-round QB route a couple times with Christian Ponder and Teddy Bridgewater, and how did either of those work out? (Sure, Teddy got hurt, but his 14 TD sophomore season hardly indicated superstardom to come.) Good old Spielman may have told them, “Drafting quarterbacks is always a gamble”, but for whatever reason, it’s been a decade of no high QB picks: not when Teddy got hurt, or when Keenum was let go, or after any of Cousins’ challenging seasons.

3. "Kirk Cousins is too old to quarterback a contending team. /( Corollary) Contenders need a great young QB."
Is the definition of contender something like “on lots of highlight reels and marketed heavily by the NFL” or “has won a Super Bowl”? Because if it’s the former, oh yeah, we see lots of hype about Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, Deshaun Watson (ok not recently), Lamar Jackson, and Patrick Mahomes. But only 1 has a championship, 2 by Mahomes. In the last decade. Only 3 Super Bowls were won by teams with young franchise QBs out of the first round: those 2 by Mahomes’ Chiefs, and 1 by the Eagles who had Carson Wentz…sort of . Another was won by a 3rd-rounder (Russell Wilson) and 6 more by old vets Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Matt Stafford. 3 of those were acquired by the winning teams late in their careers, not drafted by them. I’m pretty sure this is known around the league and the Wilfs figure getting a vet already broken in by another team – like Favre, Bradford, or Cousins – is the safer route. They also probably know Cousins has several more years before he’s at the age when Manning and Brady won their last championships.

Here's another exercise in putting yourself in the Wilfs’ shoes: What do you think they consider the best Vikings season during their ownership? I doubt if it was the 2022 13-4 fluke marked by the ugly playoff loss or the 2017 surprise marked by a fluke playoff win and then an ugly playoff loss. My guess is 2009, with the 12-4 regular season and a strong first-round playoff victory and a damn-close NFCCG loss (holding off my Saints anger here) - on the shoulders of 40-year-old Brett Favre.

4. "Cousins has been a failure for the Vikings."
No championship, true. But they keep re-signing and extending him, even after dumping a GM and HC and having a perfect opportunity to say, “We’re cleaning house, Kirk’s time is up and the new guys can pick their own QB”. So what good has Kirk done? He stabilized the laughable merry-go-round this team has endured at the most important and visible position. In the first 12 years the Wilfs owned the Vikings, 17 different players started at QB, including some real treats like Josh Freeman and Brooks Bollinger. Then they inked Cousins and the position was solid for 5 years. Know what makes an NFL team look like it’s a floundering mess? A carousel at the QB position like the pre-Stefanski Browns. Now the Wilfs were plunged back into that nightmare for the back half of 2023…think they want stability there again? Do you think a rookie they probably view as a crapshoot, with maybe Ryan Tannenhill and Jaren Hall starting some of the season, is an appealing 2024 plan?


Here is what I see that says this regime is not here to draft the QBOTF.

(Obviously) They haven’t drafted a QB.
It's rare that a new NFL coach and/or GM doesn’t obtain a new QB within their first two seasons. Every coach of the teams still in the playoffs switched (or picked a successor QB like Jordan Love) within 2 years of getting the job. One who did stick with the incumbent QB is Mike McCarthy; how’s that working out? Who wants to carry the baggage of a guy chosen by their predecessor? Well, maybe a coach and GM who were hired under condition of keeping the current QB. The Wilfs have sunk something around $150 Million into Cousins, so maybe they want to be proven right. Actually, my hunch is that Jim Harbaugh walked into Winter Park and said something about getting one of the good college QBs coming out to replace that pocket fossil Cousins, and was promptly shown the door. Then young Kevin and Kwesi said, “Yes sirs, we can prove Kirk’s a winner.”

It’s virtually a dictum – new coach, new QB. It happens by draft #2 because if you wait for the 3rd draft, a coach has to throw his prized rookie into the fire when they're hitting the hot seat. (And with almost any NFL owner, KOC and KAM would be feeling some heat this year; unsure of the Wilfs' patience.) If the QBOTF was drafted in year 2, he can likely start paying dividends in critical year 3.

I know the rejoinder to this one is, “There were no good QBs the last two years.” OK, maybe so. But there were QB prospects available: Kenny Pickett, Will Levis, Trey Lance (via trade), several 3rd rounders in the past two drafts, and if they were going to “go for it”, some of the 3 who were picked high in the last draft (Bryce Young, CJ Stroud, Anthony Richardson). Just how perfect does a prospect need to be if KOC is a “QB Whisperer”? The non-drafting leads into the next observation:

There has been no effort to collect draft capital for picking a QB high.
This management team could have traded down from pick #12 in 2022 – oh, they did! – and collected some future pick(s) from a partner to be prepared for the 2023 draft which had a number of strong QB prospects. But their trade-down was used to obtain players expected to provide immediate help: bad DBs and notably an IOL to protect a pocket passer (Kirk). Then they made no effort to trade vets (e.g., Dalvin Cook) when there still might be some value. Moreover, they traded their own 2023 #2 for TJ Hockenson. I like Hock, but a team planning to build a future “window” holds onto their picks, either for that QBOTF or young draftees to fill a need (like TE). Hock, like Ingram, was immediate help for Cousins. (He was also an immediate contract/cap challenge.) Again, I like Hock, but his acquisition was not that of a team about to start assembling cost-effective young pieces of a dynasty.

But, “We were in the midst of a great season in 2022!” Even as it unfolded, there was widespread suspicion it was crazy luck that wouldn’t last. If KAM/KOC thought that team was legit, they were chasing fool’s gold. So now we expect the same guys to have an intelligent long-term rebuild plan?

Then there’s 2023. No QB pick because picky Kevin didn’t like any of them. OK, they must be prepping for the 2024 draft. Did they trade down to acquire more picks? No, they chose a WR2 that provided immediate help for Cousins. Everyone seeing a pattern here? Then the 2023 season starts pathetically and promises no more than mediocrity even after a mild midseason resurgence. Any effort to add draft capital? Danielle Hunter certainly could have brought something from a team trying to contend. I know, we will probably get a comp pick after the 3rd round ends, but will that help in a trade-up for a QB? Not as much as something like Jacksonville’s 2nd-rounder. We effectively traded away a 2023 draft pick to acquire Danielle to help us get to our 7-10 finish. Whoo-ha.

Please: show me ANY indication these guys are preparing to move up and get “their guy”. I sure don’t see it.

KAM and KOC have been doing a lot of things that suggest they truly believe they are close to tweaking this team to immediate contention. Sure, they have turned over the roster, but in most regards they were forced to do so by age or player decline. Meanwhile they brought in players like Z. Smith, Hicks, Davenport, and Murphy that were attempts to obtain immediate production to contend. Do you think they will now do an about-face and start putting all resources into getting the team ready to contend 3-4 years from now? If so, the last two seasons were just an experiment with no building for the "real plan". Gosh, thanks for making us endure a couple of practice seasons. These guys are either trying to contend now or they are incompetent. They might even be both.


This isn’t what I want; it’s what I see the team doing. Don't shoot the messenger.