Evidently, the 2022 Vikings Are ‘Frisky.’
Some familiar words provided by naysayers on the Minnesota Vikings current organizational path include “mediocrity,” “run it back,” “stale,” or “same ‘ol, ‘ol.” Such is the case when a team cleans house with the general management and head coach — and then just retains mainly all of the same players.
But not everyone leaguewide shares the pessimistic take about the 2022 Vikings. The Athletic recently caught up with some anonymous NFL executives, asking for opinions on each’s team offseason movement.
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While some of those football brains expressed the aforementioned fan sentiment about mediocrity, using words like “Cousins fatigue” and “middle class,” not all of the anonymous men and women panned the Vikings offseason. One called the team “frisky” with the potential to do damage in the later months of the 2022 regular season:
“They basically said they don’t know enough about their team, the way it was coached, the way it was injured, to blow it up right now. If they want to blow it up next year, great. I actually think come November, December, that could be a pretty frisky team.”
Anonymous League Executive | The Athletic
And, truth be told, this possibly frisky mentality is what Vikings ownership, general management, and coaching staff is banking on. Otherwise, new general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah would’ve nuked the roster — it was the perfect time to do it — trading Kirk Cousins, Adam Thielen, and other core veteran players.
Alas, Adofo-Mensah did not, instead affording Kevin O’Connell and the current Vikings depth chart a defacto two-year window to flourish. Why two years? Well, that is when Cousins’ contract extension expires, a deal re-upped by Adofo-Mensah last month.
If Cousins cannot drag the Vikings deep in the postseason once and for all — as was the vision in 2018 when he joined the franchise — Adofo-Mensah is likely to pivot to the young-quarterback approach, outfitting the roster with a youthful signal-caller on a “cheap” five-year deal. In fact, that strategy is what some fans wanted when the new regime came aboard.
But Adofo-Mensah — who was applauded universally when hired for his sharp intellect and visionary thinking but later chided as a Wilf puppet after the Cousins extension — disagreed. He’s equipping the coaching staff with a bevy of talent, hoping to remedy the ills of Mike Zimmer’s final two seasons as head coach.
And based on the roster moves to date, the Vikings are, by implication, convinced Zimmer was the sole problem in 2020 and 2021. If he were not, more comprehensive roster moves would’ve ensued.
Like all sports doings, wins and losses will tell the story this September. The Vikings might be frisky like the anonymous person foresees — or they could go 8-9 again, signaling Zimmer wasn’t the gridiron boogeyman after all.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs every Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sally from Minneapolis. His Viking fandom dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ and The Doors (the band).
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