Great Rao! KAM's Plan Intercepted by Super Telescope?!

 Just to be a little more clear. Doesn't matter what sport. Contract years seem to bring out the best in a lot of athletes. Incidentally, same scenario as with Cody Bellinger and the Cubs. That's all i'm sayin.

They can in some cases, but is that our narrative that we like to believe or a simple distribution or maybe just something else? Especially when a guy is also entering his prime. They tend to string together better and better seasons when that happens. But contracts also tend to line up with peak years, because that's how the CBA is structured. 

Bellinger's best season was 2019 (and not even close), and not a contract year. He was being paid peanuts and not even arb eligible. That was great for his 2020 arb, but his injury/performance in 2020 and 2021 cost him a metric crap ton of money in arbitration (you might want to look up how baseball works, but a player's first 3 seasons pay out at the rookie minimum at which point they enter arbitration where their performance starts to dictate their pay, those bad seasons cost him a ton of money, and he went the arb route effectively making every season a contract season). His first full season back was 2022 and it showed. Perhaps he was bad that year from not having played a full season of baseball in almost 3 years? Maybe it had nothing to do with his character... that's all. Even with that, 2023 was nothing like 2019 where he was the NL MVP and a gold glove. He hit nearly twice as many home runs that year, with twice as many walks as well, and played a premium defensive position. He was good last year and was aided by playing some DH with new rules and less plate appearances, but he was not great by any means. And 2023 was his age 27 season when players tend to enter their prime. And by the way... it really didn't work out for him. He signed a 1 year prove it deal because he hasn't been able to stay healthy. 

So yeah, he had a good season. But I don't think his 2023 fits your narrative. Sure, you can go cherry picking and find that guy. I can go cherry picking and find plenty of others. Look at say Kirk Cousins. He got hot for a few games, but was definitely not having a career year and suffered a major injury. He certainly wasn't on pace for his best season yet. KJ Osborn was in a contract year and took a step back and many here thought he could step up simply due to his career trajectory (myself included). 

I think the OP has already proven to be wrong in the main part about kirk being obtained. Vikings said no to fully guaranteed contract and kirk is wanting a contract showing he is respected I.E money. He will be able to get more money from another team. I think all indications are pointing more at him not coming back now then him being re-signed.

I mean that is kind of where I was going with that. We said no to fully guaranteed money. So basically I think the Vikings are trying to play Minnesota nice with him and being passive aggressive with him while also seeing what other teams are going to offer him. I do think they would be open to bringing him back but in their terms not his. So this really all comes down to him hitting the open market and seeing what other teams offer him. And with a team like the falcons who have an opening at qb and in one of the weakest divisions in the NFL that is wide open next year and them having play makers on offense with a new HC I can totally see them wanting Kirk. They aren’t hurting in the cap department either.

I have thought a lot about this very thing and I am going to see how this year plays out. I think KOC is safe no matter what but I think this is the year KAM really needs to hit on FA and draft. He did a great job of getting the cap in a great position but needs he can show how to bring on talent while fixing the cap.

To your point about us not knowing who is going to actually be a free agent, I was looking at past free agent classes and very few of the top free agents are re-signed by their former teams if they havent been re-signed by the end of the season. A good number are franchise tagged, (closer to half of the best are tagged) but maybe one or two of the top guys who are set to hit free agency actually re-sign.

What does that mean for the Vikings? That means starting on the 6th we should know which players are actually available in free agency since the window to tag players will end. It also means it is incredibly unlikely the Vikings retain Hunter or Cousins and retaining both would be a historical anomaly since neither can be tagged.