Around this time in 2018, just a week after the Vikings had their dreams of becoming the first NFL team to play in a Super Bowl in their home stadium dashed with a blowout loss in the NFC title game, the seeds for the Vikings’ future were already being planted.
RandBall: Will we get Vikings quarterback clues during Super Bowl week?
If we learned a lesson seven years ago, it was this: The Super Bowl isn’t about two NFL teams but rather all 32 of them.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
February 4, 2025 at 6:16PM
Super Bowl media week went on without the Vikings, with much of the activity humming around the “radio row” interview circuit that was nestled, quite amusingly, near a food court at Mall of America.
Kirk Cousins, a free agent-to-be and a quarterback in whom the Vikings were sure to have interest, made an appearance one day during the frenzy to promote some stuff and eat at Shake Shack.
Though I wasn’t able to book him for one of the Facebook Live videos I was doing (remember when those were a thing?), I did get close enough to shout a question about whether he would be signing with the Vikings in approximately six weeks.
I wrote at the time: “Cousins merely smiled and kept walking without answering, which COULD BE A SIGN OF SOMETHING.”
It was pure speculation of the dumbest kind, which there will be a lot of in the next three months, but then again it did turn out to be something.
Vikings fans, you should be prepared for more of the same this week as the Vikings once again have a fascinating quarterback question leading up to the Super Bowl — something Andrew Krammer and I talked about on Tuesday’s Daily Delivery podcast as part of a broader look at their three biggest offseason questions.
The next big actual date to know when pondering whether the Vikings will attempt to keep Sam Darnold — the surprising architect of their 14-3 season — or move on to some combination of second-year QB J.J. McCarthy and another veteran placeholder (ahem: Daniel Jones) is Feb. 18, when the window for teams to place a franchise tag on players opens.
The Vikings could guarantee themselves one more year of Darnold at roughly $40 million by using that tag. They could also gauge the market for Darnold, something that figures to happen at least informally during Super Bowl week and later this month at the scouting combine, in order to decide how many teams are interested in signing him and at what price, should he make it to free agency.
From there, the Vikings could use the franchise tag to retain control of Darnold in order to work out a trade, ensuring they receive some compensation for what figures to be a considerable asset. Or they could find the market is cool enough that tagging him is too risky while finding that potentially re-signing him to a team-friendly deal is possible.
From much of the national media at the Super Bowl, a narrative will emerge (and already has) that the Vikings are exploring all options and might, in fact, keep Darnold.
This is consistent with what they have already said and is true primarily because no decision has to be made yet and no team should yield leverage before it is necessary. That is how the Vikings played things last year with Cousins, right up until he unsurprisingly left for Atlanta (as many signs had indicated he would).
But take it all with a grain of salt — or maybe a pinch of it if Darnold decides to show up for some fries at a Shake Shack in New Orleans this week.
The veteran forward will forfeit nearly a half-million dollars in salary if the penalty is upheld by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.
