Daily Norseman
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Sure, the Minnesota Vikings weren’t going to go 14-3 again after the run they had in 2024, but surely they were going to be a solid contender again in 2025, weren’t they?
That’s what yours truly, and a lot of other people, thought going into this season. The team was ready to move in a new direction at quarterback, finally deciding to take a swing at developing a quarterback for the long term after years of going with short-term solutions at the position. To take advantage of the bargain-level contract at the game’s most important position, they had spent lavishly at other positions of need in the hopes that they had patched all of their weaknesses. They had a coach who was coming off a campaign that saw him take home Coach of the Year honors and a lead executive who had hit multiple home runs in free agency the previous year, despite having a spotty (at best) record when it came to the NFL Draft.
And tonight, after watching the Vikings fall to 4-8 after a thoroughly embarrassing 26-0 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, the first shutout the team had put up in nearly two decades, it’s starting to look like this team is every bit as far away from contention. . .and, perhaps, even farther. . .than they were when the Kwesi Adofo-Mensah/Kevin O’Connell regime took the reins ahead of the 2022 season. Meanwhile, the rest of the NFC North has lapped them. The Detroit Lions, though they’ve stumbled a bit this season, are still well ahead of the Vikings, and the Green Bay Packers are still solidly ahead of the Vikings as well. Perhaps the most telling is that the Chicago Bears, who have spent most of the last few years as the doormat of the division, would be the #1 seed in the NFC playoffs if the season ended today.
The Vikings found themselves under a lot of bad contracts when Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell got here, and to their credit, they got out from underneath a lot of it over the past couple of seasons. And to their. . .uh, not credit, I guess. . .the team is now right back in the same situation again. They’re currently projected to be more than $30 million over the salary cap going into the offseason, they’ve given a lot of money to players who have proven to be largely ineffective, and they still don’t know for sure whether or not they have a definitive answer at the quarterback position.
There isn’t really a lot of sunshine and lollipops to be had here, folks.
As far as the quarterback situation goes, I’ll say it again. I think it’s too early to throw in the towel completely on J.J. McCarthy. There’s talent there. He needs reps. Yes, some of the reps are going to be ugly, but you know what? This whole damn season has been ugly, and there’s a really good chance...
