The Vikings are listed as a favorite to sign Dak Prescott in 2021 for some reason

Every once in a while, a piece of information gets passed to us here at The Daily Norseman that’s a reason for a great deal of head scratching. This is one of those instances.

The folks from BetOnline have put together a list of which team current Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott will be playing for in 2021. Prescott had the franchise tag placed on him by the Cowboys and the two sides could not come to a long-term deal before the start of this season, so the speculation aspect of this makes sense.

What doesn’t make a whole lot of sense is that the Minnesota Vikings are among the favorites to sign Prescott for the 2021 season.

BetOnline has the Indianapolis Colts as the favorite at 6-to-1, and the Chicago Bears right behind them at 7-to-1. Then there’s the Vikings, who are listed with the Los Angeles Chargers with 8-to-1 odds.

When you look at those four teams, the Vikings being among those favorites doesn’t make sense. Frankly, the Chargers don’t make sense, either. The Colts just brought in Philip Rivers, who is closer to the end of his career than the beginning. Chicago has the Mitchell Trubisky/Nick Foles “battle” at quarterback, so it makes sense that they’re on there as well. The Chargers just drafted a young quarterback, and I’d think they would give him an opportunity before going after Prescott.

Then there’s the Vikings, who just extended Kirk Cousins’ contract to put him under Minnesota’s control until 2022. The implication here is that the Vikings would go after Prescott and, presumably, trade Cousins away somewhere.

I honestly don’t know why anyone would think that the Vikings would do that. The team obviously likes Cousins a lot, and they’ve tailored a system around Cousins’ strengths that they’ll continue to keep in place with Gary Kubiak as the offensive coordinator. The only way the “Vikings sign Dak Prescott and trade Kirk Cousins” scenario makes any sense is if the Vikings completely bottom out this season, Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer end up getting fired, and a full-scale house cleaning takes place.

And, let’s be honest. . .is Dak Prescott really an upgrade over Kirk Cousins? I would posit that he is not. I’m sure that folks will disagree with that assessment, but I’m not sure what Prescott has shown that would lead people to believe he’d be an upgrade. He would likely want more money than Cousins is slated to make as well, which would make a Cousins-for-Prescott swap even less wise, in my opinion.

Obviously this is all just speculation at this point, since the 2020 season has to play out before any of this could happen anyway. But someone put the possibility out there, so we thought we’d say something about it.