Making Sense of the Stephon Gilmore Signing
NFL fans and pundits alike were confused by the Vikings’ signing of CB Stephon Gilmore. There is little question that the five-time Pro Bowler is an upgrade at the cornerback position: last season, at the ripe-old NFL age of 33, Gilmore boasted a PFF grade of 74.4 — higher than any cornerback on the Vikings’ roster.
But Gilmore is under contract with the Vikings for only one season, a season in which the club’s Super Bowl odds now sit at +8000, or about 1.2%, after the injury to rookie QB J.J. McCarthy. To many, then, the one-year, $7-10 million signing of Gilmore seems like an “all-in” move, whereas the Vikings ought to be stockpiling resources for future success.
This apparent dissonance derives from a more general philosophy that views team building as a choice between two diametrically opposed routes to success: on the one hand, there is “going all in.” On the other hand, there is “tearing it down.”
According to this philosophy, a team should either try to win the Super Bowl or else they should try to be bad, saving up draft capital and cap space for a future shot at glory. There is no middle ground, just two options separated by a 180-degree reverse in strategy.
NFL teams rarely subscribe to this philosophy, however. The plot below shows each NFL team’s active cash spending in 2024, according to overthecap.com, along with their number of wins in 2023. As you can see, the correlation between the two is very weak:
In other words, NFL teams spend big-time money pursuing success, whether or not they are likely to achieve it.
This illustrates a more general point: there may be a discrepancy in team-building approach between the best and the worst teams based on their projected winning windows and time horizons, but it is a slight difference in bearing, not a 180-degree change, of course.
Both the Super Bowl champion Chiefs and the last-place Panthers are looking to replace older, worse, and more expensive players with younger, better, and cheaper players. The difference is that the Chiefs have more talented players already, so less roster turnover is necessary.
The idea of a total rebuild is enticing to fans yearning for a championship, but there is little incentive for people within the Vikings organization to carry it out. Players won’t intentionally lose or “tank” just so their team can draft better players to replace them.
Coaches and general managers, similarly, face the possibility of losing their jobs if their team seems to be headed in the wrong direction. Owners want to make money, and winning brings in more money than losing, even if it doesn’t result in a championship.
So whether the fans like it or not, the Vikings are going to try to win in 2024, even if it requires spending money on aging players like Gilmore, who likely won’t be around for more than a season. But even from an outsider’s perspective, there are reasons why Gilmore’s signing makes sense for the Vikings.
First and foremost, although a 2024 Super Bowl championship is very unlikely, it is not impossible. The 2001 Patriots started the season with +6000 (1.6%) odds of winning a Super Bowl but ended as champions. The 2017 Eagles faced +4000 (2.4%) preseason odds and did the same. Last season, the Houston Texans faced the lowest odds of any team in the NFL, at +20000 (0.5%), and ended up with a playoff win.
Football isn’t played on paper, and anything can happen at this point of the season. If 2024 Sam Darnold starts playing like 2017 Carson Wentz and Brian Flores’s defense returns to mid-2023 form, Vikings fans will probably be glad the front office paid $7-10 million for Gilmore’s services.
Even in the more likely scenario that 2024 is a year to forget for the Minnesota Vikings, there may still be benefits to having Gilmore in the building. If Gilmore plays well and fits in nicely in the Flores scheme, there is always the chance that the Vikings could bring him back in 2025. If not, he brings intangible qualities like leadership, championship experience, and a well-documented work ethic.
On the flip side, Gilmore’s success is not guaranteed to persist, even in the 2024 season. At age 33 (soon to be 34), Gilmore is already well past the age where defensive backs start to decline. There is a reason why all of the teams who are supposedly in “win-now” mode (the Chiefs, Bills, 49ers, etc.) passed on the veteran: for them, the risk was too big and the reward too small to justify such a large contract.
So, in the final analysis, there are reasons to be optimistic about the Gilmore signing, and there are reasons to be skeptical. But at the end of the day, the merit of the Gilmore signing will depend not on how it fits with an overarching front-office philosophy but on whether or not he can execute the job of a starting NFL cornerback.
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