When Kirk Cousins went down with a season-ending Achilles injury last year at the end of a win over the Packers that improved the Vikings to 4-4, a segment of Minnesota fandom hoped the team would explore signing veteran free agent Joe Flacco.
RandBall: As it turns out, Joe Flacco was perfect for the Vikings
Fans wanted the Vikings to get him last year. A lot of us worried he would carve up the Vikings this year. But it all worked out perfectly in the end.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
November 4, 2024 at 6:35PM
Instead, the Vikings traded for Josh Dobbs. After a brief love affair with the “Passtronaut,” Vikings fans quickly learned of his limitations. Minnesota finished the year 7-10, earning the No. 11 pick in the draft. Cleveland scooped up Flacco in November and rode his hot hand into the playoffs.
Fast-forward to 2024. The Colts signed Flacco to serve as Anthony Richardson’s backup. He again sparkled in limited duty and was given the starting assignment against the Vikings on Sunday. I warned Vikings fans that this was “not good news” for Minnesota’s prospects of winning.
Wrong. As it turns out, Flacco was perfect for the Vikings — as Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday’s Daily Delivery podcast.
Minnesota harassed and confused Flacco repeatedly. The former was expected given that Flacco, 39, was never a mobile quarterback and is even less so now. The latter was very surprising given Flacco’s veteran status and his reputation as the type of QB who could make quick throws and carve up Brian Flores’ defense in much the same way Jared Goff and Matthew Stafford did the previous two weeks.
Flacco never looked comfortable in the pocket. He looked even less comfortable on the sidelines. Anytime a camera found him between Colts offensive series, he looked like someone in the lobby waiting for a job interview for a position he hoped he wouldn’t get.
Me, the starting quarterback? I’m your top candidate? Are you sure?
The Colts scored just six points on offense. The Vikings gave them seven more on a Sam Darnold strip sack, and Darnold’s two interceptions helped keep the game close. But Darnold also ripped a bunch of big-time throws on the way to nearly 300 yards passing and three touchdowns.
He is the kind of QB that head coach Kevin O’Connell seems to covet — a playmaker with some risk-reward to him, less of an aging guy who will safely go through his reads like Flacco or Cousins.
Flacco on last year’s Vikings might have won them a couple more games and let them sneak into the playoffs. It also probably would have left them without the necessary draft capital to so easily get their QB of the future, J.J. McCarthy.
So it all worked out. Flacco arrived at U.S. Bank Stadium at the perfect moment in the Vikings’ trajectory.
Here are four more things to know today:
- Reusse made the case that the 18-team Big Ten has been a weak football conference in its first year, and it’s hard to disagree. But that shouldn’t take away from the Gophers’ four-game winning streak, which will become five if they can knock off a bad Rutgers team next weekend.
- We’re starting to see the Wild in the Top 5 of a lot of NHL power rankings, which is not at all what I expected at the start of the season.
- When Jeff Day isn’t sending me Knicks box scores with big Karl-Anthony Towns games highlighted, he’s writing great stuff like this piece on the Wolves’ ownership situation.
- Andrew Krammer will join me on Tuesday’s podcast to break down film from Sunday’s game. My three hot takeaways are already posted, and Andrew found one of them particularly spicy:
The Nittany Lions converted on three fourth downs while protecting a one-point lead to keep the Gophers from getting the ball back.
