The days ahead

Draft tie breakers is strength of schedule not tie breaker used for standings.

I never like to put the cart before the horse, but despite the fact I think the 23 Vikings are a better team than the 22 Vikings team, if the team is going to go through a full reboot....then they do need to be sellers at the deadline.  I'm fully aware I've argued it is not the right environment to put a rookie into, but I just don't see them keeping him around and I'm not sure even if you did it would make a difference in 24 so if that is the case then we may as well not kick more dead cap down the road. 
1)  We are going to need all the ammo we can find.  Assuming Kirk, Hicks and Hunter are gone either now or at season's end, they are probably going to have right around 37-38M to spend on FA after accounting for Rookies and Cuts/Trades.  The really don't have many restructure candidates outside of Jefferson and I am guessing he's forcing a trade.

So here is what you have to replace:

Starters: 10 Starters or Rotational  (11 if Jefferson is Traded)
Cousins
Osborne
Cleveland
Akers
Hunter
Bullard
Davenport
Hicks
Smith
Joseph
***And I fully expect JJ to ask for a trade***


2nd Depth Chart: 9 players
Udoh
Risner
Mundt
Powell
Schlottmann
Quessenbery
Wonnam
Dye - Not a big loss
Brandel

Currently have 7 Pics and call it $38M to spend.
Rd 1 - 1 Pick
Rd 2 - 1 Pick
Rd 3 - 0 Picks
Rd 4 - 1 Picks 
Rd 5 - 2 Picks
Rd 6 - 2 Picks - I think we have our's and the Patriots via trade for Lowe, but Spotrack only shows 1 so maybe I'm wrong.  

Bottom line is we'll need a lot of pics in the draft.  Before all the draft haters speak out....bottom line the team has to draft players because they screwed the competitive rebuild.  I wanted to be able to keep Kirk 2-3 more years until the team is on better footings, but he kept players too long and pushed too much money down the road and the short contracts are creating a massive exudus of players after this year who play prominent rolls without capable backups ready to replace them because our last 3 drafts have been void of real elite talent save for Darrisaw, Bynum and Addison.  Bottom line with virtually nobody waiting in the wings outside of S to replace any of these players, you can't replace 10 Starters and 5-6 backups with 2 picks in the top 100 and 38M of cap space.  You are going to have to create more picks!  The real question is can Kwesi extract max value for the players he wants to unload at the deadline with everyone knowing he is going to be a seller?  And for all of you on the never trade Jefferson bandwagon, I'm not sure he'll leave us a choice.  Unloading him would bring significant draft capital and save us almost 20M in cap. 

I'd love to keep him, but when you have as many holes as we have is one elite receiver eating up 10% of your cap with nobody to throw him the ball worth more than 20Million in Cap Space and 3-more players drafted in the top 3 rounds?  I fully understand you could swing and miss badly....but you are talking about potentially filling 4 maybe 5 spots between 2 Upper Mid Range FA and 2 out of 3/4 Draft Picks panning out.  I've said this before, great WR are a great luxury to have, but they don't win you SB's.  Between Jefferson, Carter and Moss we've had 3 of the best WR's to ever to play the game and how many SB rings do we have?  Hopkins, Megatron, Julio Jones, DeVonte Adams, Dez Bryant, Stephon Diggs.  None have SB rings and only Jones has even made it to a SB!     

Kupp is the only "really good WR" in recent history to play a prominent role.  But he also had a stacked Defense around him and a team that had gone all in to win in 1 year....that would not be the case in keeping Jefferson.       

Wait what happened to our 3rd rd pick?

3rd round pick goes to Detroit.

Detroit sends a 4th round pick back to Minnesota.

Thus concludes the Hockenson trade.

Critical to start Winning.  Viking will make playoffs.  Have to get the roll going this week. 

Eh, we ain't making the playoffs so it won't really matter. But I am sure they will win enough to blow a shot at Williams, Maye and probably even McCarthy and Sanders. Bears, Cardinals, Patriots, Broncos probably all looking for QBs, hell maybe even the Raiders. We'll probably find a way to finish better than all of them and get our pick of tight ends or long snappers