All Things 2022 Minnesota Vikings Off-Season Thread

Donate To GopherHole
GopherWeatherGuy said:
I was going to respond with something similar about Bienemy. There is something there that is preventing him from being hired as a HC, he's had a ton of interviews with NFL teams and even college, and yet he remains the OC for the Chiefs.

Maybe he also likes being a coordinator, or hasn't found a situation he wanted to jump for? Or maybe he wants to stay in KC and take over for Reid?
Click to expand...
I've heard that Bienemy is a scream/yell, get in your face type of coach which most teams don't want these days. And it certainly isn't what the Vikings wanted to follow Zim with.
 

Bad Gopher said:

Point taken. People obsessing about O'Connell's offensive schemes when 1) their problem was defense and 2) they hired him as head coach, not OC, is cognitive dissonance. Ultimately any early success will hinge on their ability to improve the D, and the key hire will be DC.
Click to expand...
Take the $ saved by not hiring Harbaugh and send it to Vic Fangio's house...
 

Bad Gopher said:
Another thing The Athletic reports is that O'Connell gave the Vikings a "nuanced" evaluation of Cousins in his interview. The word on the street is that O'Connell was a voice recommending they part with Cousins in Washington. The winds seem to be blowing in the direction of moving on from Kirk. They could do wonders with that money, of course. I'd be enthused about this, especially if that's what the coach and GM really want.
Click to expand...
If they do move on from Kirk, doing what the Rams did could be an option: find some undervalued veteran guy. If you can, he won't be cheap, but he'll be cheaper than Cousins, and if it's someone even close to Stafford's capability, it could be good enough to make some hay.
 

Some people may be over-thinking this.

It doesn't matter what Harbaugh thought coming into the interview - OR what his agent was leaking to the media. and make no mistake, a lot of the buzz was generated by agents leaking to the media.

In the end, the two sides sat down, they talked, and both sides decided that this was not the right fit. Harbaugh sent out a tweet complementing KAM and the Vikings.

it's like a blind date. at the end of the night, you don't hate each other, but you decide the chemistry isn't right and you're not going to go out again.

I think it's as simple as the Vikes want to go in one direction, and Harbaugh wanted to go in a different direction as far as the QB, roster moves, etc.
 

howeda7 said:
I've heard that Bienemy is a scream/yell, get in your face type of coach which most teams don't want these days. And it certainly isn't what the Vikings wanted to follow Zim with.
Click to expand...
I heard he also likes to cheat by using extra players
 


Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Florio is a complete and total tool; I wouldn't click on a single one of his links.

The Athletic article linked above by Bad was a good read, a lot of good information in there.

Still very, very interested to see who is going to be on KOC's staff
Click to expand...
I don't really have an opinion one way or the other on Florio. Why the hate?
 

Gophers_4life said:
A very bitter Mike Florino here: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/02/03/vikings-missed-their-chance-to-get-jim-harbaugh/

With Harbaugh, everything is a little awkward. But so what? He wins. After multiple years of creating the impression that being “just good enough” was good enough for ownership, the Vikings declared that they intend to compete for championships. If they truly intend to do that, they should have hired Harbaugh.

Fortune favors the brave, they say. The Vikings ultimately weren’t brave enough to roll the dice on a guy who has generated plenty of sevens (when sevens are good). Instead, they’re opting for the predictable unpredictable, plucking the latest product from the Sean McVay assembly line and hoping that a guy who never was a head coach (and who never has called plays) will be able to effectively do a job he has never done.

Meanwhile, Harbaugh has been an effective head coach. FOR NINETEEN YEARS.

I would have hired Harbaugh. If it didn’t work, there would have been the next flavor-of-the-month, lather-rinse-repeat, cookie-cutter candidate from one of the Super Bowl teams. Like there is every year.

The Vikings hired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to serve as the team’s G.M. Adofo-Mensah wanted to hire Harbaugh. They should have let him. Instead, Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell will have to find a way to form a critical partnership, even though both know that O’Connell wasn’t the first choice. (Good luck.)

There’s still time to fix it. O’Connell hasn’t been hired. The deal isn’t done until it’s done, as we learned four years ago. Even if the interview was an abject disaster, it’s not about who gives the best interview. It’s about who is the best option to lead a team that has never won a Super Bowl, and that supposedly wants to.

Do the Vikings really want to win a Super Bowl? Or is ownership concerned that things may not work smoothly in the building, given that they don’t live and work in Minnesota and thus aren’t there to monitor and/or mediate? If the Wilfs lived and worked in Minnesota, would they have hired Harbaugh? (Unfortunately, there’s a chance the answer to that question is “yes.”)

Harbaugh is proven. O’Connell is not. And the best evidence that Harbaugh would have potentially worked out very well for the Vikings is this: Big Cat, a Bears fan, made it very clear on PFT Live today that he was worried the Vikings would hire Harbaugh.

They still can. They still should.


The tone almost feels like he was personally invested?? But why.

Is it because the media thinks having JH as the HC would give them more content to write about and generate clicks with than a "ho-hum" guy?
Click to expand...
Wasn’t able to bold the sentence from my phone, but this is just an incredible sentence—And the best evidence that Harbaugh would have potentially worked out very well is this: Big Cat, a Bears fan, made it very clear he was worried the Vikings would hire Harbaugh.

How in God’s green earth is that evidence, good or bad? A Bears fan was worried? I really have no idea who Big Cat is (is he the guy attached to Barstool Sports?), but what does his opinion matter? What a moronic statement.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
Some people may be over-thinking this.

It doesn't matter what Harbaugh thought coming into the interview - OR what his agent was leaking to the media. and make no mistake, a lot of the buzz was generated by agents leaking to the media.

In the end, the two sides sat down, they talked, and both sides decided that this was not the right fit. Harbaugh sent out a tweet complementing KAM and the Vikings.

it's like a blind date. at the end of the night, you don't hate each other, but you decide the chemistry isn't right and you're not going to go out again.

I think it's as simple as the Vikes want to go in one direction, and Harbaugh wanted to go in a different direction as far as the QB, roster moves, etc.
Click to expand...
This was handled poorly by the Vikings. If there's no "fit," you figure that out in the initial conversation on Saturday and move on. Everyone assumed (reasonably so) that if someone of Harbaugh's caliber actually sets foot in Minnesota it's a done deal.

The only recent hire that I think is comparable here is Tubby Smith. The Gophers were never going to bring him to MN, have a chat and then say, "yeah thanks anyway you can go back to Kentucky." If you advance that far down the road with someone like this, it's a done deal 95% of the time.
 

howeda7 said:
This was handled poorly by the Vikings. If there's no "fit," you figure that out in the initial conversation on Saturday and move on. Everyone assumed (reasonably so) that if someone of Harbaugh's caliber actually sets foot in Minnesota it's a done deal.

The only recent hire that I think is comparable here is Tubby Smith. The Gophers were never going to bring him to MN, have a chat and then say, "yeah thanks anyway you can go back to Kentucky." If you advance that far down the road with someone like this, it's a done deal 95% of the time.
Click to expand...
yup - you get your due diligence done on the zoom machine.

They said everything was going great until 3pm. You have to wonder if Harbaugh's ego lost patience. He probably thought they should have been talking contract by that point
 



The Vikings selecting an OC to be HC of a team that was top 12 ranked offensively, and 30th defensively seems like the wrong diagnosis.

It seems like people are working to appease the people who are Justin Jefferson fans first, and fantasy football owners second, and people who want to see playoff wins, third.

Seems like people are attributing many of the negative aspects of Zimmer to the fact he's a defensive coach and an old coach vs the fact he was a head coach with no experience and so is O'Connell.
 

Face The Facts said:
The Vikings selecting an OC to be HC of a team that was top 12 ranked offensively, and 30th defensively seems like the wrong diagnosis.

It seems like people are working to appease the people who are Justin Jefferson fans first, and fantasy football owners second, and people who want to see playoff wins, third.

Seems like people are attributing many of the negative aspects of Zimmer to the fact he's a defensive coach and an old coach vs the fact he was a head coach with no experience and so is O'Connell.
Click to expand...
If the Vikes were "blown away" at his vision for the team (and not by his offensive scheme), then they at least made this decision for the right reason. No info (yet) on what those vision points were, but if they're truly vision items, then it's high-level stuff. We know he can design an offense, but what it will come down to is whether he can design a way of doing things in the big and medium pictures that yields success.
 

Face The Facts said:
The Vikings selecting an OC to be HC of a team that was top 12 ranked offensively, and 30th defensively seems like the wrong diagnosis.

It seems like people are working to appease the people who are Justin Jefferson fans first, and fantasy football owners second, and people who want to see playoff wins, third.

Seems like people are attributing many of the negative aspects of Zimmer to the fact he's a defensive coach and an old coach vs the fact he was a head coach with no experience and so is O'Connell.
Click to expand...
They've gone with a former DC the last 2 coaches. It makes sense to try the other side. But who the DC is will be key. Hence, give Fangio whatever it takes. Not only he is a helluva DC, but he's a grizzled old guy with HC experience. A good counter-weight for this staff.
 




Gophers_4life said:
A very bitter Mike Florino here: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/02/03/vikings-missed-their-chance-to-get-jim-harbaugh/

With Harbaugh, everything is a little awkward. But so what? He wins. After multiple years of creating the impression that being “just good enough” was good enough for ownership, the Vikings declared that they intend to compete for championships. If they truly intend to do that, they should have hired Harbaugh.

Fortune favors the brave, they say. The Vikings ultimately weren’t brave enough to roll the dice on a guy who has generated plenty of sevens (when sevens are good). Instead, they’re opting for the predictable unpredictable, plucking the latest product from the Sean McVay assembly line and hoping that a guy who never was a head coach (and who never has called plays) will be able to effectively do a job he has never done.

Meanwhile, Harbaugh has been an effective head coach. FOR NINETEEN YEARS.

I would have hired Harbaugh. If it didn’t work, there would have been the next flavor-of-the-month, lather-rinse-repeat, cookie-cutter candidate from one of the Super Bowl teams. Like there is every year.

The Vikings hired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to serve as the team’s G.M. Adofo-Mensah wanted to hire Harbaugh. They should have let him. Instead, Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell will have to find a way to form a critical partnership, even though both know that O’Connell wasn’t the first choice. (Good luck.)

There’s still time to fix it. O’Connell hasn’t been hired. The deal isn’t done until it’s done, as we learned four years ago. Even if the interview was an abject disaster, it’s not about who gives the best interview. It’s about who is the best option to lead a team that has never won a Super Bowl, and that supposedly wants to.

Do the Vikings really want to win a Super Bowl? Or is ownership concerned that things may not work smoothly in the building, given that they don’t live and work in Minnesota and thus aren’t there to monitor and/or mediate? If the Wilfs lived and worked in Minnesota, would they have hired Harbaugh? (Unfortunately, there’s a chance the answer to that question is “yes.”)

Harbaugh is proven. O’Connell is not. And the best evidence that Harbaugh would have potentially worked out very well for the Vikings is this: Big Cat, a Bears fan, made it very clear on PFT Live today that he was worried the Vikings would hire Harbaugh.

They still can. They still should.


The tone almost feels like he was personally invested?? But why.

Is it because the media thinks having JH as the HC would give them more content to write about and generate clicks with than a "ho-hum" guy?
Click to expand...
He’s close friends with John Harbaugh
 



young, interactive, collaborative probably fits better with what KAM and the Wilfs want and Oconnell fits that better. Unsure if it'll be the right call long-term (I'm not as sold on O'Connell and will very likely depend on the coordinators, investment, and players around him, similar to McVay and his disciples). We shall see but it's going to be a reboot 1-2 years depending on how KAM can fix this broken roster.
 


Some guy said:
It is worse than 2011 If they offload cousins without a similar quality replacement
Click to expand...
They won't, I expect they extend him and see what they can do with Cousins at the helm.
 

Bad Gopher said:
If they do move on from Kirk, doing what the Rams did could be an option: find some undervalued veteran guy. If you can, he won't be cheap, but he'll be cheaper than Cousins, and if it's someone even close to Stafford's capability, it could be good enough to make some hay.
Click to expand...

They won't get someone as good as Stafford for less than Cousins costs. Cousins is close to Stafford, with the right coach he could easily be Stafford or better.
 

Face The Facts said:
The Vikings selecting an OC to be HC of a team that was top 12 ranked offensively, and 30th defensively seems like the wrong diagnosis.

It seems like people are working to appease the people who are Justin Jefferson fans first, and fantasy football owners second, and people who want to see playoff wins, third.

Seems like people are attributing many of the negative aspects of Zimmer to the fact he's a defensive coach and an old coach vs the fact he was a head coach with no experience and so is O'Connell.
Click to expand...
But again, look at all these teams that have offensive HC and still do indeed have good D's.

30th I mean you pretty much have nowhere to go but up.

And that 30th was with a DC head coach.
 

Wally said:
They won't get someone as good as Stafford for less than Cousins costs. Cousins is close to Stafford, with the right coach he could easily be Stafford or better.
Click to expand...

If they decide to move on from Cousins, it will be to create more salary cap space. So they would not bring in another QB who would demand a large salary.

The goal, If they get rid of Cousins, would be to draft and develop a young QB who is playing on a rookie contract.

It's possible they bring in some veteran for one year as a place-holder - but that QB would have to be willing to play on a team-friendly contract.

in other words, take a step back in order to fix the salary cap and move forward with a young QB - not another retread.
 

howeda7 said:
They've gone with a former DC the last 2 coaches. It makes sense to try the other side. But who the DC is will be key. Hence, give Fangio whatever it takes. Not only he is a helluva DC, but he's a grizzled old guy with HC experience. A good counter-weight for this staff.
Click to expand...
Suppossedly Fangio was attached to Harbaugh.
 

Bad Gopher said:
If the Vikes were "blown away" at his vision for the team (and not by his offensive scheme), then they at least made this decision for the right reason. No info (yet) on what those vision points were, but if they're truly vision items, then it's high-level stuff. We know he can design an offense, but what it will come down to is whether he can design a way of doing things in the big and medium pictures that yields success.
Click to expand...
Paraphasing Quote I read his vision that blew them away was an emphasis on leadership, inclusivity and collaboration.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
If they decide to move on from Cousins, it will be to create more salary cap space. So they would not bring in another QB who would demand a large salary.

The goal, If they get rid of Cousins, would be to draft and develop a young QB who is playing on a rookie contract.

It's possible they bring in some veteran for one year as a place-holder - but that QB would have to be willing to play on a team-friendly contract.

in other words, take a step back in order to fix the salary cap and move forward with a young QB - not another retread.
Click to expand...
Marcus Marriota or Minshew are my picks for 2022 QB.
 

atsgopher said:
Suppossedly Fangio was attached to Harbaugh.
Click to expand...
I've heard they're not that close anymore and besides that's irrelevant now that Harbaugh is 1,000% committed to Michigan for the rest of his life or whatever his text said. Fangio isn't going to college.
 

howeda7 said:
Marcus Marriota or Minshew are my picks for 2022 QB.
Click to expand...
That's the category I was thinking, too. Not at the level of Stafford, but not intending to be the permanent solution Stafford was. I do think there are undervalued assets out there. Seeing how Brad Johnson and Rich Gannon were more than functional after we cast them off, I've always felt there are guys out there who can help you.
 


howeda7 said:
I've heard they're not that close anymore and besides that's irrelevant now that Harbaugh is 1,000% committed to Michigan for the rest of his life or whatever his text said. Fangio isn't going to college.
Click to expand...
Sure, just stating the point to advance the potential wrinkle.
 

howeda7 said:
Marcus Marriota or Minshew are my picks for 2022 QB.
Click to expand...
Cousins will be the QB this year. No one wants that contract and why eat the dead money to get another guy. They may overreach on a QB to try develop for a year this year depending on what OConnell wants. Cap casualties would be the following to me:
Thielen: making far too much money (17-18 mil/yr for the next 3), hasn't been healthy in a couple years. Either you restructure him or try move him; hard to know he'll have a market
Hunter: 26 mill this year then his contract gets more friendly, but i could see them trying to leverage that to move on given the younger guys they like vs restructuring him if he's going to stay to balance his money out
Barr vs less likely Kendricks: Lot of money at LBer
Smith: he's 33 and his contract is going to hurt worse and worse; luckily his dead cap hit becomes less each year so he may have a market.

Cousins still will cost us 45 mil if we cut him. 10 mil if we trade him. And someone will want you to eat some of the salary to trade him given he's not on a multiyear deal and KC has a history of not signing those.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom