If Money Talks, then The Vikings GM Has a Megaphone
K. Joudry
|
An awful lot has been written about Minnesota’s financial situation.
Minnesota is most commonly a team that needs to look under the couch cushions to raise funds, but the Vikings GM currently has the luxury of abundance. Indeed, the cap space is coming in above $18 million, meaning Minnesota finds itself in the 8th-best position in the NFL (which is to say nothing of their 6th-best cap outlook from 2023-25).
The decisions haven’t been easy — many fans found it painful to say goodbye to Eric Kendricks, Adam Thielen, Dalvin Cook, and several other veterans — but Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has diligently put together a cap that’s malleable enough to keep adding talent.
One wonders, then, what the GM will do. What kind of message does the GM send when he does make his roster decisions?
The Vikings GM and The Message in 2023
Not everyone is persuaded about the merits of Adofo-Mensah’s competitive rebuild.
Mike Florio, the proprietor over at Pro Football Talk, made his opinion known in June. In a piece titled “A year after running it back, the Vikings are tearing it down,” Florio lays out his understanding of the situation:
Even as the Vikings will try to persuade themselves and others that they’re trying to get to the Super Bowl and win it (every team says that, every year), the Vikings have a broader plan to make themselves into a consistent Super Bowl contender. It involves deliberately taking a major step back in 2023, in the hopes that it will lead to multiple steps forward in 2024 and beyond.
Whether that’s tanking or strategic rebuilding is a matter of semantics. The Vikings aren’t prioritizing winning as many games as possible in 2023, just like the Cardinals. The Vikings are thinking about the franchise’s future with a franchise quarterback — a true, year-in and year-out best-in-the-league-or-close-to-it passer and runner that they haven’t had since Fran Tarkenton.
Not everyone will agree with Florio’s assessment, but his understanding of the situation shouldn’t be altogether dismissed. In some instances, the Vikings truly did take a step back by failing to retain and/or bring back a player (Za’Darius Smith and Dalvin Tomlinson stand out). And, of course, the possibility of saying goodbye to Kirk Cousins is in front of us all due to the lack of extension.
Therefore, Florio contends, the Vikings exist on the same spectrum as the Cardinals, a team that’s similarly avoiding full-out contention in 2023 in favor of a better shot at future success.
How can the Vikings disprove the opinion of the PFT writer? Well, leaning into some of that cap space would certainly do the trick. We’re talking about the NFL. Money rules the roost.
Where your treasure is, Christ says, there your heart will be also. Jesus’ words are meant for a spiritual purpose and yet they reveal something meaningful about the NFL, as well. Teams spend major money on quarterbacks because that’s a position of massive value. Follow the money, folks. If you want to know what a team truly values, just follow where they spend their money.
For our purposes, that means gobbling up some of that 2023 cap space to improve the chances of competing right now. The 2024 season and beyond can worry about itself at a nebulous future date. Talent is present and the team thinks it has a chance to overcome all challengers. If that’s true, then one might expect the team to use some of that cap space.
Plenty of digital ink has been devoted toward free agents to consider as well as trade targets, so we won’t go down that path again. Instead, let’s simply reiterate the central point.
Kwesi will send a strong message to the NFL, those who write about the NFL, fans of the Vikings, and, perhaps most importantly, Minnesota’s players if he aggressively seeks to upgrade the roster. Just think back to last season for an example. What kind of message got communicated when Minnesota pulled off the T.J. Hockenson trade? Yes, the TE is young enough to help them in the future, but downgrading a pair of draft picks to acquire an excellent player tells the players that management believes in their ability to compete and thus wants to do its part to help.
Rebuilding has its merits but one has to think that someone like Justin Jefferson would be thrilled to see Kwesi push down on the gas, speeding things up as they try to drive up Mount Lombardi.
There would be far less ambiguity if the team locks in Danielle Hunter, agrees to a deal with one of the preeminent free agents, and maybe even ventures into another trade. If those things occur, then the message is clear: the team is very serious about competing in 2023.
The Vikings season begins on September 10th when the Buccaneers visit U.S. Bank Stadium.
Editor’s Note: Information from Over the Cap helped with this piece.
