Tuesday Open Thread: March 23, 2021

Merry Tuesday, everyone!

It’s gotten a bit quieter around the NFL. I would imagine it’s mostly quiet around Viking headquarters as well. I’ll bet that Coach Zimmer is in the lab, mixing up his “Fountain of Youth” recipe that worked so well on Terrance Newman, so that he can use it on Patrick Peterson. Meanwhile, Rick is slowly pacing the halls, wearing all black and wearing a black veil, weeping, and mourning the loss of his precious 7th round draft pick, which was viciously and maliciously taken from him by the authorities at NFL headquarters. When Rick is finished mourning, the mourning will become anger, and he will be hungry for vengeance. Mr. Goodell had better learn to sleep with one eye open.

So, the frenzy from the kickoff of free agency has throttled back to a mild buzz, and I doubt that we’ll see any more headline-making deals for at least another month or so. In the week or so leading up to the NFL draft will be the next time period where deals will be more likely to occur, in my opinion. So until then, we’ll keep an eye out for more mid-tier to lower-tier transactions to add depth and/or add cap space, and the Vikings will need cap space in order to sign the picks they will make in the upcoming draft. As of now, the Vikings have 58 players signed, and they have cap space of $3.3 million and some change (that’s with their top 51 players, they’re actually in the hole by about $750K going with the contracts for all 58), according to Spotrac, and that won’t be enough to sign their draft picks. As an aside, I see on the Spotrac chart that the average age of the currently signed Vikings is 26 years old, which is the 7th youngest roster in the league. The Colts have the youngest roster at 25.65 years old, and the Cowboys have the oldest at 27.64 years.

Around the DN since our last open thread:

Rob busted open The Daily Norseman Mailbag.

From wludford, the Vikings plan to play Patrick Peterson at cornerback. There had been speculation that the team may move the aging corner to safety, but that appears to be incorrect.......for now.

Other Vikings/NFL news and random oddities and annoyances:

From Fox News, Deshaun Watson faces four additional sexual misconduct lawsuits. These additional four bring the total number of suits against him to eleven.......so far. A personal standard practice of mine is to avoid judging people based off of news stories, and to wait until the issue has gone through the courts or until adequate information is made available. I’ll maintain that practice in this case, but if he’s guilty of the things he’s accused of, I won’t have much good to say about the guy.

The next major NFL event is the NFL draft, and NFL.com has a list of each team’s picks and other information about the event.

See all trades, signings, and any other NFL transaction at NFL.com’s transaction page.

From Vikings.com, Patrick Peterson explains what drew him to Minnesota, and Craig Peters gives some insight on what the Vikings did to land the cornerback.

We come to today’s media selection:

Here’s a highlight reel of Patrick Peterson’s career (I’m guessing nearly all of these highlights are from 2019 and earlier, just a guess. Enjoy!

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

-No discussion of politics or religion
-No feeding of the trolls
-Take the gender hatred elsewhere, it won’t be tolerated
-Keep the bad language to a minimum (using the spoiler tags, if you must)
-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
-If you can’t disagree in a civil manner, feel free to go away
-While navigating the open thread, just assume it’s sarcasm.

With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open. Belly up & tie one on, don’t forget to tip the cows, and settle in, the excitement won’t start for a while.