Minnesota Vikings News and Links: January 21, 2020

Merry Tuesday, everyone!

I’d like to take a brief look at the state of the Vikings, and have a discussion on the direction they should take. They’re coming off of a 10-6 season (one of those games was played by the JV squad, so a case could be made that their season was more of an 11-5 season, but whatever), where they made the playoffs via the wild card spot. In the playoffs, they beat the Saints in the wild card round, then were beaten by the 49ers in the divisional round.

Who/what would I keep as-is:

Coaches - I would extend the head coach’s contract before going out to look for coordinators. If they want to attract good coordinators, they need to have a head coach in place, not a lame duck head coach. They should either extend Zimmer or fire him, in my opinion. If it were up to me, I’d extend him. They need to find both an OC and a DC. If the team rolls into next season with Zimmer as a lame duck head coach, then I doubt they’d be able to attract solid coordinator candidates, and I think Kubiak and Zimmer would be the hirees for the coordinator positions . If they send the team into the season with a lame duck coach, I would not be optimistic for the team in 2021, as I think camaraderie and team cohesion would suffer. I’d love to see the team extend Zim, hire Wade Phillips, and bring in an offensive coordinator who has a successful history of being able to game plan to maximize his players’ strengths and minimizing their weaknesses.

GM: Rick Spielman is also approaching a ‘lame duck’ year after the Vikings signed him to an extension (link courtesy of PFT) keeping him here through 2020. Rick has been a much better GM since Zimmer got here. I think he’s done a pretty good job, for the most part. It appears that he and Zimmer ‘connect’, and he’s gotten much better as a GM with Zimmer here. Rick has sought input from and listened to advice from his coaching staff, with the exception of the offseason between 2017-18, which is when he made his most glaring mistakes, in my opinion. Those mistakes were in hiring DeFilippo and making the Cousins signing. I think he let his ego get in the way that off-season, and he stopped listening to those who had helped him become better. He seems to have learned since then, but it’s hard to tell for sure. What do you think about Spielman? Keep him, or try another approach?

Players:

• Cook’s contract is going to have to be dealt with. I’d sign the kid.
• Cousins is here, and I don’t think he’s worth $28 million. That’s not a knock on him, it’s just that the team overpaid for him. You pay a quarterback $28 million when he can overcome the weaknesses that are going to be present when you allocate a very high % of your salary cap to one player, and an extraordinary % of your salary cap to several key players. It would be nice to find a team to which Cousins would accept a trade, but that’s a long-shot, so it doesn’t pay to explore the idea. He’s very likely here for another year, so do you extend him with the hopes of lessening the cap hit?
• Anthony Harris is going to command a large salary (rightly so), so do you sign him? I would.
• Offensive line- Yikes. Okay, so I’m of the opinion that an offensive coordinator can get more out of the O line than we got last year, HOWEVER, we obviously need to address the talent we have on the offensive line. Reiff is aging but capable, and there are some high-potential personnel such as O’Neill and Bradbury, but there are question marks and some holes to fill. This will not be an easy task. Being tight against the salary cap prevents the team from spending a lot in free agency (rarely do you get what you pay for).
• Aging vets - I hate it, but it’s time to let some of our favorite vets go. I have a feeling that we’ll see quite a few familiar faces wearing different uniforms next year. I have a feeling that Rhodes will be gone, and it’s possible that Griffen could be gone as well, although he’s stated that he’d like to stay.

There are lots of changes coming, folks. I’ll be watching for a decision to be made on Zimmer’s contract first, because that will be indicative of the direction this team plans to take in the future.

Around the DN since our last open thread:

George Paton may be heading to Cleveland, shared by Chris.

Other Vikings/NFL news, and random oddities and annoyances:

From ESPN, Jim Caldwell won’t return to the Dolphins in 2020. It shouldn’t be hard to not return, he was never really there. The coach was hired in February of last year, and took a leave of absence in July and never returned last year. Interesting, there’s a potential offensive coordinator for Minnesota. Hmmmmmmmm.

From FoxSports, Aaron Rodgers says the ‘window is open’ for another championship. You’ll find it shocking to hear that I don’t agree.

We come to today’s media selection:

Here’s a great one from the 80s. A lesser-known band called Faster Pussycat, enjoy!

We all know the rules, but in case someone is new:

-No discussion of politics or religion
-No feeding of the trolls
-Leave the gender hatred at the door
-Keep the bad language to a minimum (using the spoiler tags, if you must)
-Speaking of which, if discussing a newer show or movie, please use spoiler tags
-No pictures that could get someone fired or in serious trouble with their employer
-While navigating the open thread, just assume it’s sarcasm.
-If you can’t disagree in a civil manner, feel free to go away

With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open. Belly up & tie one on. You might want to go grab your own drink and get your own food from the kitchen, the waiter is cleaning fish and has fish guts all over his hands..........again.