PART 2: The Vikings are THE WORST 0-2 Team in the NFL…Come At Me!
AJ Mansour
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So the Minnesota Vikings are 0-2 on the season, bummer. That’s bottom of the division, bottom of the league, bottom of the barrel around the board. But if you follow this team as closely as I do, you’re probably hearing a few different narratives being tossed about. It might be as simple as identifying the optimists from the pessimists and calling it a day. Or it might be a little deeper than that.
So in the second part of this (at least) two part “Come At Me” series, we turn the page to the dark-side today and discuss why the Minnesota Vikings are the most disappointing 0-2 football team in all of the NFL.
*Not ready to turn the corner to negative town? Then PART 1 is definitely for you! It represents the other side of the coin and why the Vikings are THE BEST 0-2 team in the league!
Oh boy…here we go.
So the Vikings are 0-2, right. That’s the worst possible start that you could have possibly imagined for this team through two weeks of the season. From a wins/losses standpoint it cannot be worse than it is. Then you look at how it all happened and you might even feel worse about where this team is sitting.
Heading into each season, when the schedule is initially released the first thing everybody does is work their way through the list and land on a win/loss outcome for each game. Fans do it, analysts do it, even the players do it. They may not put as much stake in it as the fans do and they may have a more realistic “any given sunday” mindset, but they’re lying if they tell you they don’t look through the schedule and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.
So for those who partook in this exercise this season, they almost certainly chalked Week #1 against the Cincinnati Bengals as a win. I mean the Bengals have a second year quarterback who was coming off of an ACL injury, their defense stinks and they only won four games last year. It’s basically the equivalent of a non-conference game in the NCAA.
And then they lost.
That’s not a good way to kickoff the season for a team that before we even started had the 5th toughest schedule ahead of them this season.
Now off to an 0-2 start, the Vikings are staring down the barrel at the Seattle Seahawks and Cleveland Browns ahead of them before they have (what we think will be) a “winnable” game on the schedule against the Lions.
Further more, many of the concerns that we had leading into the season have reared their ugly heads through the first two weeks. The team struggles on defense, both against the run up the middle and on the outside against the pass. Beshaud Breeland is ranked by some as “the worst CB” in the league through two games and is about to be benched for Cam Dantzler. Some rankings have ALL the Vikings CBs in the bottom 20 of the league. The Anthony Barr situation is starting to feel more like the Danielle Hunter situation from last season. It’s unknown what we have with the offensive line as they’ve been hot and cold through two. And special teams, oh special teams is still a concern.
But the real disappointment and the reason why we would consider pushing the Vikings lower on the 0-2 list of teams, the future outlook has some concerning issues that need to be addressed.
This is small-fries comparatively speaking, but the Vikings panicked and traded a 4th round pick to the Jets for TE Chris Herndon who has had ZERO impact on the first two games. Sure it’s still early and he may be acclimating still, but at what point should he be up to speed? So far they’ve basically given away a 4th round pick for nothing.
Sounds familiar right? Just last year they ended up out a 2nd round pick for the Yannick Ngakoue trade. Second round picks often have impact in their first season, the Vikings are a team that could use that right now.
Depth is a problem on this team and it can be directly correlated to the Kirk Cousins contract. Whether you were for it or against it when they first signed him, there’s no way around the fact that guaranteeing a quarterback nearly $30 million a season is going to have an impact elsewhere and we’re seeing how it has effected depth already. Even the head coach commented on this last week saying that the big contracts make it tough to have a deep team. Then you look at the roster and you see a bunch of one-year contracts on the defense, little depth at the linebacker position, no depth at the cornerback position and an offensive line that despite their best efforts in last year’s draft looks little improved.
Then there’s the quarterback position. Kirk’s played well through the first two weeks of the season, he’s had a successful two-minute drive in each week, but most of the future outlook does not include Cousins at the helm…right now.
Kirk is under contract for one more season beyond this year and it comes with a hefty $45 million cap hit, yikes. But if he’s not the quarterback, who do you have? Kellen Mond was a third round pick this last season, but if the preseason shows us anything he’s got a long way to go before he’s ready to see real action. Free agent quarterbacks haven’t been too kind to the Vikings during the Spielman regime. So what’s the plan there and where is the optimism?
And if we extrapolate this two game losing streak out further, maybe to an 0-4 start or simply a season that misses the playoffs, are we looking at a coaching change? A GM change? There are already reports that are speaking to this claiming sources close to the situation say it all hinges on the playoffs this year for Zimmer’s future.
Not off to a good start on that front.
Most of the other 0-2 teams have something to be excited for…Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville, Zach Wilson with the Jets…the Vikings have some exciting pieces but for Minnesota fans that doesn’t feel any better because we know how this plays out. Those exciting pieces are here for a few more mediocre seasons then as Cook, Thielen and Hunter see their contracts expire, Justin Jefferson’s rookie deal ends, and Harrison Smith reaches retirement age and we’ve missed out on the window that this current group of Vikings had to compete for a title.
Then what?
For these reasons the Minnesota Vikings remain the most disappointing, most discouraging and yes maybe the worst 0-2 football team in the NFL this season.
Disagree with these thoughts…COME AT ME! ?
*Not ready to fully turn the corner to negative town? Then PART 1 of this “Come At Me” series is definitely for you! It represents the other side of the coin and why the Vikings are THE BEST 0-2 team in the league!