Minnesota Vikings Offseason Preview

This is the eighth installment of an ongoing series of offseason previews.

2025 Season in a Nutshell

Imagine waiting months for a hot date with someone who presents themselves as an absolute smokeshow on Tinder or whatever. Your prospective soulmate arrives late, spills a vodka cranberry onto your lap, refers to themselves in the third person by a weird nickname, disappears to take a call, leaving you to talk to the waitress for a while (who is are somehow worse conversationalists than your date), chews their lemon-garlic tilapia with an open mouth, leaves to take another call, acts just normal enough in the final half hour to keep you from climbing out a restroom window to freedom, then leans in for a wet, sloppy garlic-tilapia kiss and asks, “Can we do this again soon?”

That’s what the 2025 Vikings season was like.

Coaching Situation

In the shrewdest tactical maneuver of his career, Kevin O’Connell deflected blame for the J.J. McCarthy fiasco onto general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. O’Connell’s reputation as a brilliant developer of quarterbacks remains unblemished, despite the fact that he has never, ever developed a quarterback.

The Vikings will pay Brian Flores $6 million to remain their defensive coordinator, despite the fact that Flores was a longshot to get any head-coaching offers. We all know who really wears the tactical pants in Minnesota. Also, keep in mind that the executive who probably handled coaching contracts (and let Flores’ deal expire, raising his asking price) is now running the whole franchise.

Quarterback Situation

McCarthy stinks but makes up for it by always being injured.

You may still labor under the delusion that McCarthy could turn things around or showed a little development during the Vikings’ late-season winning streak. Sure. Sam Darnold reached the Super Bowl. Anything’s possible. Just keep in mind that the Vikings executive most likely to have agreed with you has already been fired.

State of the Roster

There’s gobs of talent on both sides of the ball: Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockensen and some darn good offensive linemen on offense; a slew of versatile tough guys (Andrew Van Ginkel, Jonathan Greenard, Byron Murphy, Josh Metellus, Dallas Turner, etc.) on defense. Many top contributors are reaching their late prime, but this is hardly an over-the-hill gang.

Given league-average quarterback play, the Vikings could be Super Bowl contenders. See 2024 for proof of concept.

Cap and Draft Stuff

The Vikings are $40 million over the cap.

Adofo-Mensah spent lavishly in free agency in recent years, and he took the restructure-as-you-go approach to contract design. Interim GM Rob Brzezinski can easily tidy the cap ledger by turning some Jefferson/Greenard/Murphy salaries into signing bonuses. But Brzezinski will be hard-pressed to create enough space to pursue big-bucks free agents. Which is a problem for a team that needs a quarterback.

The Vikings will select 18th, 49th, 82nd and 97th in the first three rounds of the 2026 draft. The 97th pick is a compensatory selection. That’s not quite enough ammunition to move up for a quarterback, and there aren’t really any quarterbacks to move up for.

One Thing the Vikings Should Do

Aaron Rodgers. Why not? They almost did it in 2025. It would provide Packers fans with a jump scare. Both the Vikings and Rodgers have a compulsive need to retrace Brett Favre’s steps from gridiron glory to an undiscovered circle of hell. Rodgers isn’t serious about rejoining the Steelers — he’s just tormenting Mike McCarthy while engaging in some therapeutic self-flagellation — and this year’s Vikings roster will probably be stronger than last year’s Steelers roster.

The Vikings shouldn’t really sign Rodgers. It would be expensive, disruptive and short-sighted. But it’s no more ridiculous a possibility than any of the others that are on the table.

In Summary

The best-case scenario for the 2026 Vikings may be to find a cheap journeyman quarterback, prop him up with Jefferson, Addison and Flores’ defense, and hope to surprise the NFL with a playoff run built on close victories. The Vikings did just that with Darnold in 2024 and Case Keenum in 2017. It’s remarkable how often the Vikings end up with this exact best-case scenario.

Banking on plucky winnersauce college quarterbacks (McCarthy, Christian Ponder, Teddy Bridgewater) was an organizational quirk long before Adofo-Mensah arrived. So was overspending on veterans. The Wilf family sided with Brzezinski, an old-school football guy who has been in the front office for decades, over the flawed-but-economics-oriented Adofo-Mensah. They may discover that they fired the solution, not the problem.

(Before you @ me about Bridgewater’s 2016 injury, take a long look at his 2015 stats and supporting cast. I love the guy, but he basically built a full season out of December McCarthy.)