Minnesota Vikings face uphill battle to retain playoff status

The Minnesota Vikings are undergoing significant turnover, meaning their 12 draft picks need to materialize immediately. This puts the team in an uphill battle to retain their playoff status.

The Minnesota Vikings were a good but not great team in 2019. That description fits their record, and it also feels like an apt descriptor of their talent and roster. Thanks to a Dalvin Cook breakout, the offense performed better than that numbers-wise, but it doesn’t feel like an elite group. Things won’t be immediately better in 2020 either.

There’s got to be a reason that Stefon Diggs continually hinted that he wanted out and eventually got his wish. Kirk Cousins isn’t good enough to lead a mediocre group to much success. In fact, he may be worse than that.

Considering Diggs and Adam Thielen struggled to stay healthy and/or failed to live up to high expectations, this group felt much closer to middle-of-the-pack than upper-echelon. The defense has been shredded this offseason too, leaving the Vikings in a predicament. How quickly can they retool to retain their playoff status? It will be an uphill battle.

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Dan Salem and Todd Salem debate the Minnesota Vikings in today’s NFL Sports Debate.

Todd Salem:

The reality for Minnesota takes on new meaning after the Diggs trade and Cousins extension. The Vikings got a nice haul of draft picks for Diggs and created a little cap wiggle room by extending Cousins, but neither move solves any issue. It just opens the door for those solutions. Minnesota now needs to draft a good wide receiver to avoid having their offense take a nosedive. This is the correct year to draft wide receivers but they still need to hit on it.

Creating the aforementioned cap wiggle room was paramount. When the offseason began, Minny was completely capped out. A Cousins extension was necessary, as his $31 million hit felt untenable. That drops down to $21 million for this season, but it was just one step. The team also jettisoned big-time contributors Xavier Rhodes and Linval Joseph to free up another $18.5 million. Which brings us to the picture of the defense.

Everson Griffen is gone. Trae Waynes, Mackensie Alexander, Marcus Sherels, Andrew Sendejo and pretty much the entire secondary is as well. The only returning players of note in the defensive backfield will be Harrison Smith, the surprisingly franchise-tagged Anthony Harris, who the team is looking to move, and 2018 first-round pick Mike Hughes. A little different than many defenses these days,

Minnesota has some playmakers in the linebacker corps. Even still, 21st-century defenses need to have push up front and coverage on the back end. With Griffen not coming back, that takes a huge chunk out of the former. The secondary is going to look drastically different as well, regardless of how hard the front office wanted to keep it the same.

We can see a plan taking shape, but there are a lot of steps that still remain this late into free agency: fill the enormous hole left by Griffen, revamp the secondary, and add to the offense, likely through upgrades along the offensive line and depth at wide receiver. We know Cousins is going to remain the linchpin.

He isn’t getting a lagging roster over the hump, which frankly means the rest of the team has to be playoff-caliber. And right now it doesn’t look it. There is not enough talent left over to remain at the 10-win level it was in 2019. Minnesota has one of the tougher offseasons of any of the 2019 playoff teams.

Dan Salem:

Several former playoff teams fail to return to the postseason each new year, as they inevitably fall back to the pack. Last season it was the Rams, Bears, and Cowboys who most notably fell short in the NFC. Minnesota is dangerously close to accepting the same fate in 2020. The defense will look significantly different and the offense is still led by Cousins with fewer weapons at his disposal. At least the offensive line is reasonably intact.

I feel as though I’m missing something with regards to the Vikings because they’ve shed many of the players that brought them so much success in the last few years. Quarterback stability will certainly help Minnesota continue to excel, but not if they fail to capitalize on the deep wide receiver draft. It’s also hard to fathom that this team’s strength has been defense, but they seem to be okay with that changing.

Sometimes cliches are true and there’s no better example than the Vikings. The NFL Draft will be a huge difference-maker for Minnesota. They have two first-round picks and five picks in the first three rounds. With a total of 12 picks overall, the Vikings can easily trade up in round one to grab a difference-maker, as well as fix the holes left by free agency.

I expect those three seventh-round picks to be immediate trade fodder because that round is probably the least likely to produce an immediate impact otherwise. Assuming the Vikings have a very good draft, what are realistic expectations for this team in 2020?

Minnesota finds itself in a cluster of good but not great teams in the NFC. Green Bay and Chicago are going to make things difficult in the NFC North, while another eight teams present strong competition for a playoff spot. Thankfully for the Vikings, we get an extra playoff team in each conference starting this season.

That is likely the difference for Minnesota, because the separation is just not there. They were the last team into the playoffs in 2019 and I expect a similar outcome again in 2020. Good but not yet great, unless someone steps up to push them over the top, ahem Kirk Cousins.