Stop the Preseason Vikings Panic. It’s Absurd.

All the Vikings News: September 2
Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports.

The Minnesota Vikings played dreadfully versus the Denver Broncos during both teams’ first preseason contest of 2021. A team’s performance without 30 of its players is not the measuring stick to use in predicting future wins and losses.

Both of these statements can exist is the same vat of truth.

It’s bizarre that this must be declared — missing 30 players from a football team is a big damn deal. Imagine the 2020-2021 Milwaukee Bucks without its starting five [and then some]. Zero championships could have been achieved.

While the Vikings second and third-team personnel are accountable for some unforgivable miscues — yes, the head coach is even upset about them — those players will have a menial impact on the 2021 regular season compared to the 30 men watching from the sidelines. This is elementary. Football teams are not the same entities without 57% of their eventual 53-man rosters.

What’s more, the Zimmer brand of the Vikings lays one egg — almost like clockwork — per season. In 2017, it was terrible timing with the NFC Championship debacle. The following season, 2018, rookie Josh Allen hurdled linebacker Anthony Barr en route to an embarrassing defeat for the heavily-favored Vikings. Then in 2019, it was the game that caused Stefon Diggs to flip out. And during the pandemic season, there were two — at the Indianapolis Colts and versus the Atlanta Falcons at U.S. Bank Stadium.

There is a plausible chance that the one trashy game of 2021 was on Saturday — just enough for Mike Zimmer to crack the whip sooner than expected. The end result of the Broncos shellacking was not ideal, but perhaps it was a blessing in disguise for Zimmer to scream now and get it out of the way.

Infamously, the 2008 Detroit Lions boasted an undefeated 4-0 preseason record in the season before Matthew Stafford arrived. Things were peachy for one month in Detroit. After that, the Lions lost all 16 games in the regular season, etching a spot in history as one of the worst NFL teams ever.

Preseason football — particularly with 30 prominent players spectating — is not a magic eight-ball for the regular season. Would you like to turn on the television to a competent batch of Vikings second and third-stringers? Yes. But that didn’t happen — and it is not supernatural for those players to struggle against the Broncos first-teamers.

On the bright side, Kellen Mond was afforded more time than most fans expected. He did not display gangbuster-like stuff in his first organized outing, but Mond was welcomed to the franchise as a developmental contingency plan for Kirk Cousins’ future. Players with developmental attached to their reputations take time to mature. It’s why they’re called developmental. What did Mond do on Saturday? He developed, making a few nifty plays with his feet while wrangling with accuracy. This is how it goes, folks. If all rookies were akin to Patrick Mahomes. defensive coordinators would drive taxis.

The 2021 Vikings need their quarterback. His name is Kirk Cousins. The 2021 quarterback is not named Kellen Mond, Jake Browning, Nate Stanley, Jake Etling, or Case Cookus. Cousins takes a lot of heat — some of it justified, some of it mythical — but the 2021 Vikings are the Cousins-Vikings. Period.

And the team needs its defense, too, anchored by Danielle Hunter, Eric Kendricks, Anthony Barr, and Harrison Smith. No one of those men played on Saturday.

Don’t use a preseason game with 57% of the roster absent as a primary source for doomsdayism.

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