Will the Vikings' New Leadership Blow Up the Roster or Retool Once More?
With the NFL's legal tampering period for free agents opening on Monday and the new league year beginning on Wednesday, we're about to find out Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's vision for the Vikings' roster. The first-time GM has been quiet so far, but moves are coming. At the very least, Minnesota needs to clear over $15 million from their books to become salary cap compliant.
Mark and Zygi Wilf have said publicly that the Vikings plan on being "super competitive" this fall. Soon enough, we should know whether or not that's actually true. One way or another, Adofo-Mensah's first big roster moves will tell us if the Vikings are going to tear things down and rebuild from the ground up or if the plan is similar to the one employed by the previous regime over the last two offseasons: minor changes with a goal of playoff contention this year.
The other finalist for the Vikings' GM vacancy, Ryan Poles, has already chosen his approach in Chicago. He's begun a full scale makeover of the Bears' roster, moving on from several big-name veterans in order to start anew with a healthier cap situation. Poles traded Khalil Mack to the Chargers and cut Eddie Goldman and Tarik Cohen. Other expensive veterans could be next.
Will Adofo-Mensah do the same? There have been reports that the Vikings are open to moving some of their veteran stars. Kirk Cousins is the guy whose status looms over the entire offseason because of his position and price tag, but players like Adam Thielen, Dalvin Cook, Eric Kendricks, and Michael Pierce have been brought up as well. The source of those reports has a poor recent track record when it comes to Vikings news, but they're still worth acknowledging. The Vikings also have a decision to make on Danielle Hunter's future.
Update: The Vikings signed Cousins to a one-year extension, indicating they have no plans to blow things up.
If Adofo-Mensah doesn't love the team's current roster and wants to build for the future, he could trade or release several players who have been mainstays in Minnesota for a long time or were major acquisitions by Rick Spielman. Resetting the salary cap and accumulating draft picks would make the Vikings worse in 2022, but it could benefit them in the long run. That would be a clear way for Adofo-Mensah to put his stamp on things and build a roster the way he wants to.
The alternative is tweaking things slightly and going for it this year. That's what Spielman and Mike Zimmer did in both 2020 and 2021, and it got them fired when it failed. The argument in favor of that approach would be that a new coaching staff led by Kevin O'Connell might be able to get more out of this roster than the previous staff did. The Vikings are pretty loaded on offense, at least on paper, and eight of their nine losses last year came by eight points or fewer. Cousins isn't worth his contract and the interior offensive line and defense need to be addressed, but this is a roster with a lot of blue-chip talent on both sides of the ball. Maybe a retool could work for Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell even though it didn't work for Spielman and Zimmer.
It's a major philosophical decision that the Vikings' new leadership has to make, one that will determine the direction of the franchise in 2022 and beyond. Internally, it's probably already been decided.
Starting this week, we'll find out which path they choose.
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