Sansevere: What the Vikings need to do to play in Super Bowl LVI
Bob Sansevere
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The Super Bowl will be played Sunday and the Vikings won’t be in it for the 10,000th year in a row. All right, maybe it’s not that long but it sure has been a while. Anyone 45 years old or younger either wasn’t born yet or still was in the googoo-gahgah stage of life the last time the Vikings played in a Super Bowl.
In that last one, Super Bowl XI, they lost to the Raiders. Before that, they lost to the Chiefs, Dolphins and Steelers in Super Bowls IV, VIII and IX.
The Super Bowl between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs is the LVth. (That’s No. 55 if Roman numerals baffle you.)
Two questions. What will it take for the Vikings not to wait another LV years to be in the Super Bowl? And what needs to be done for them to play in LVI? (That’s next year.)
Well …
Pulverize any thoughts of Aaron Rodgers coming here. Deshaun Watson? Well, it would take a lot of wrangling and likely involve more than one team to get it done. For now, Kirk Cousins is the Vikings’ quarterback, and he has a damn good bunch of players to catch his passes.
The offense can use more help on the O-line, hardly a groundbreaking news bulletin, but it already has the talent elsewhere to to win. Just some tweaks: Get Dalvin Cook integrated more in the passing game, and feature Tyler Conklin along the lines of how the Chiefs use Travis Kelce.
Conklin is good enough to be as much of an option as Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen.
It is befuddling the Vikings could have someone with Conklin’s skill set on their roster for several seasons and hardly use him until Kyle Rudolph got hurt. I’m a big fan of Rudolph but his age and contract and Conklin make him expendable.
As for the defense, what it mostly needs is to get bodies back. Nose tackle Michael Pierce, the big 2020 offseason signing, opted out this past season due to Covid concerns. The Vikings get him back along with DE Danielle Hunter and MLB Eric Kendricks and the defense is so much better. Anthony Barr would help, too, but his return isn’t as vital as having Pierce, Hunter and Kendricks on the field.
The secondary will be better merely because the kid cornerbacks had plenty of on-the-job training.
Oh, also helping the Vikings to enhance their chances of playing in Super Bowl LVI is for Mike Zimmer and his staff not to screw things up with their coaching.
Anyway, enjoy Sunday’s game.
Bob Sansevere hosts a daily podcast called “The BS Show,” which also is broadcast on radio stations in Duluth (KDAL), Hibbing (WNMT) and St. Cloud (WBHR).