Dear Vikings fans, STOP saying “Draft our Mahomes”
Dustin Baker
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Stop Saying “Draft Our Mahomes”
In the last 25 years, 22 quarterbacks have started football games for the Minnesota Vikings. From Warren Moon to Kirk Cousins, the Bollingers, Bradfords, and Johnsons have received their crack at leadership of the Vikings franchise. During the same timeframe, the rival Green Bay Packers have started five men at the quarterback position – Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Flynn, Seneca Wallace, and Brett Hundley. That’s nearly 4.5 times the number of signal-callers that the Vikings have auditioned than the Packers. Football fans enjoy giggling at the Cleveland Browns quarterback futility – 32 passers in the last 25 years – but Minnesota is not outlandishly behind Cleveland in quarterback turnover.
Minnesota has refused to stick with a quarterback longer than that of Daunte Culpepper’s stint in the 2000s. Culpepper quarterbacked the Vikings for 80 contests (or five cumulative seasons worth of games). He was then beset by a knee injury and never regained stardom thereafter. After that fateful October day when Culpepper’s career with Minnesota punctuated, it’s been several one or two-year stints for folks at the quarterback position for the Vikings.
Kirk Cousins signed on the dotted line in 2018 to finally affix the quarterback spot on the Vikings depth chart. He arrived from Washington in free agency, and since then, Cousins has been the NFL’s sixth-best quarterback via passer rating (103.3). It worked, right?
Yes and no. The front office – people who matter when making decisions – seem to enjoy the return on the investment. Fans, on the other hand, are torn. Cousins is portrayed as inconsistent. Factors such as offensive line performance or defensive woes shall not be considered by some when considering his success.
Instead, these folks favor a plan that ousts Cousins from the Vikings roster. Nevermind the financial lunacy it entails. Somebody – anybody – is a suitable trade partner, they believe.
The utopian idea is to “Draft Our Mahomes” rather than continue with Cousins as the Vikings leader. Here’s why that is plan is pea-brained.
Mahomes is Generational
Last weekend, Mahomes reached the threshold necessary to qualify for most reputable passing statistic metrics. With his 1,500th career pass against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he instantly rocketed to the top of nearly every serious quarterback metric. He’s now the best quarterback of all-time by passer rating – putting Deshaun Watson, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson to shame. It’s Mahomes by a mile in this metric.
Also, Mahomes has shattered every “most [blank] through 15,000 attempts” or “most [blank] by age 25” known to man. He’s that damn good. He’s generational. When he calls it quits, Mahomes will very likely be the best ever or right there with Tom Brady (depending on how many precious Super Bowls he wins). Somehow, team Super Bowl wins became an individual quarterback accomplishment. A new standard is established, for better or worse.
Are Patrick Mahomes-caliber quarterbacks available in each draft? No. Just as Michael Jordans do not lurk in each NBA draft, there is not a Patrick Mahomes waiting at the corner store for you to recruit.
The LeBron James Example
The New York Knicks – a once-storied organization – has not been a credible NBA Finals contender since 1999. The team resides in the largest, sexiest sports market in this galaxy but cannot find its footing to contend for a championship.
The sure-fire solution is for the Knicks to draft the next LeBron James in the 2021 NBA Draft. There you have it. VikingsTerritory has fixed the Knicks.
Of course, the Knicks have accrued countless lottery picks in the last 20 years. Some decent basketball players were chosen, some flunky basketball players were chosen. Why can’t they nail down their LeBron? Because that man doesn’t exist. A player like LeBron James or Michael Jordan or Patrick Mahomes finds his way to the pros every 20-30 years.
Now, if you think quarterbacks live inside the NFL draft that will be verifiably more productive than Kirk Cousins, that’s a fair conversation to engage. But that mentality is markedly different than waving a wand and snagging “a Mahomes.”
“Don’t Know Until You Do It”
There are risks. You might cast Cousins to the side in favor of a Deshaun Watson or Josh Allen. That would be an intelligible swap. You might get a Cousins bedfellow like Jared Goff. Or, you could land Paxton Lynch, Mitchell Trubisky, Josh Rosen, or Dwayne Haskins. All of the aforementioned players (sans Cousins) are first-round talent quarterbacks.
On a football team, the stakes get no higher than the selection of quarterback. If a Paxton Lynch is the pick, the team is derailed at least two years (and usually longer). Consider the 2015 Denver Broncos. Now look where they are – quarterback hell.
Rather than going to a casino in search of a hypothetical Patrick Mahomes clone, Minnesota must cultivate resources around Kirk Cousins, a player that has the sixth-best passer rating of all-time – five notches below Mahomes.
Otherwise, the Vikings fall back in the cycle of swapping signal-callers every three years.