Why the Vikings’ Competitive Rebuild was Better than Tanking
Before the 2024 season, many Vikings fans were calling for a tank. “We have no chance of winning a Super Bowl with Sam Darnold as our quarterback,” the logic went, “so we should just take a year off and save our cap space for 2025.”
In the end, Sam Darnold’s late-season collapse (after an outstanding regular season) did play a major role in the Vikings’ first-round playoff exit. Indeed, as the doubters predicted, the Vikings failed to win a Super Bowl.
Nonetheless, the Vikings’ current roster demonstrates why the front office strategy of a “competitive rebuild” was so much better than a tank. At the start of the 2024 offseason, the Vikings signed three free agents who would go on to play the starring role in the team’s defensive resurgence: EDGE Jonathan Greenard, EDGE Andrew Van Ginkel, and LB Blake Cashman.
In principle, the Vikings could have chosen to save the cap dollars they spent on those free agents for 2025. But if they did that, they would now have to try to find replacements for Greenard, Van Ginkel, and Cashman: two Pro Bowlers and one who very well could have been a Pro Bowler. Such talent is extremely difficult to find in free agency, no matter how much cap space you have.
Herein lies the issue with the strategy of tanking: stockpiling cap space and/or draft capital costs talent. And starting-caliber talent is scarce in the NFL, which means that even if you have the capital to afford it, you might not be able to find it.
As an extreme hypothetical, you could imagine a team that wants to devote the lion’s share of their cap space to the all-important position of QB. After all, teams with the best QBs tend to win the most games, so if a $50 million QB like Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen can win 13 games, just imagine how many games a $100 million QB could win!
There is little doubt that a QB who is twice as valuable as Lamar Jackson would be able to win the Super Bowl every year. The problem is, no such QB exists (and they never will).
Furthermore, bringing in new players (especially through the draft) is always going to involve a greater degree of risk than keeping players already on your team. Players who excel in another team’s system might struggle in yours, and players who dominate the college ranks frequently fail to adjust to the speed of the NFL.
As a result, signing talented players to multi-year deals and extending top players already on your team is the surest way to build a future contender. During the 2024 offseason, the Vikings hit the lottery with their defensive signings, and now they get to reap the rewards of those signings for years to come.
The reality is, the 2025 Vikings are also highly unlikely to win the Super Bowl—only one team in 32 will get that honor. But, through their competitive rebuild, they have built themselves into a serious contender, and that’s where every Super Bowl run must begin.