FanPost

The Worst Injury to Ever Happen to a Franchise

Typically if a player gets injured, if it is a season ending or even a career ending injury, the impact of that injury only lasts a year. The player is replaced or comes back from injury, and the franchise is able to move on, even if the affected position has diminished slightly or greatly. With the Vikings and Teddy Bridgewater, we moved on with a different player, but the impact of that injury went well beyond just losing Teddy for a year. It more than likely cost us a Super Bowl, and for sure cost us a franchise QB.

"But Teddy wasn’t even that good" you say, "Cousins is so much better". A valid opinion and I don’t really want to argue that point. Here is the thing though, whether you liked Teddy or thought he wasn’t any good, his injury cost us a young franchise QB. Going into the 2016 season, we felt we had a SB winning caliber team and obviously we did not. That challenging season would have told us whether we had a franchise guy in Teddy, allowing us to move on with him as our starter for another decade, or it would have shown us we needed to move on and draft another QB…in a year with Mahomes available at 10. So even if you hated the prospect of Teddy starting for your favorite team, if he truly did suck, he would have turned into an already elite in Mahomes, or worst case, a very good prospect in Watson.

Other franchise have lost franchise QBs due to injury though, if not so early in their careers or before they were even drafted. No franchise has lost their franchise QB (Bridgewater or Mahomes), AND given significant pieces to the team that would stop them from going to the SB two years later. When Teddy went down, for better or worse (definitely worse) our GM decided to give up a 1st and cap space to the Eagles who had no first in the 2017 draft. This allowed them to completely change how they handled their offseason, giving them the ability to sign Jeffrey, and fill a need for depth at DE with Barnett. It turned the Eagles into an elite team that was virtually unbeatable, and made the Vikings significantly worse, with Case Keenum at QB instead of Bridgewater or Mahomes. Culminating in a NFCCG loss and a losing shot at the franchise’s first SB ring.

The ripple effects of the injury might not even be done. If Cousins doesn’t figure things out this season, he could end up being a very expensive blunder that only needed to happen because Teddy was injured and we missed out on him or Mahomes. There is also the awful prospect of Teddy taking over for Brees and succeeding in NO or Mahomes becoming the GOAT.

Of course, if Cousins wins the SB it could make all of this moot. We would still have given those horrible Eagles fans a SB, but at least we would have one ourselves.


This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.