Two years ago, T.J. Hockenson looked exhausted after the Minnesota Vikings’ Week 2 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. He slumped next to his locker, with grass stains on his white uniform and bags under his eyes. Still, he believed the Vikings could salvage their season.
“0-2, it’s a tough way to start,” he said. “But there’s a lot of football ahead of us. There’s an unwavering belief in this locker room that we’re going to come out with a win every week.”
Only 11.5% of teams that have started 0-2 have made the playoffs. The Los Angeles Chargers beat the Vikings 28-24 the next week, sending them to 0-3. Since 1979, only six teams have lost their first three games and made the playoffs. Of the 158 teams that have started 0-3 since 1990, only four have made the playoffs, and none have reached the Super Bowl.
Minnesota didn’t buck the odds that year, despite adding Dalton Risner and Cam Akers after Week 3. Justin Jefferson and Kirk Cousins suffered non-contact injuries in Week 5 and Week 8, respectively, that kept them out for most of the season. Joshua Dobbs only had so much magic. However, because the Vikings didn’t tank in 2023, they missed out on Drake Maye, who led the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl this year.
Tanking is controversial because it creates rifts in the organization. Front offices and ownership want to tank to get a higher draft pick, especially with a team that doesn’t have a franchise quarterback, but players and coaches don’t.
Ultimately, the Vikings don’t believe in tanking. Brian Flores is suing the Miami Dolphins because their owner allegedly was going to pay him to tank. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has called tanking “unconscionable.” Ownership always wants the team to be “super competitive.”
Players never want to do it because they play through injuries and often have short careers. Coaches don’t want to risk the front office firing them for losing, even if it’s intentional tanking. Losing records also tarnishe their résumé.
Still, tanking would have been easy to execute and more justified in 2023. The Vikings could have told Jefferson to shut it down after his hamstring injury and tried to trade Cousins. Some instances of tanking are less painful than others.
Conversely, franchise-tagging Sam Darnold is easier to justify. The tag would have cost the Vikings $40 million, preventing them from splurging in the offseason. Still, Darnold was coming off a season in which he threw for 4,319 yards, 35 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. He probably beats out J.J. McCarthy in camp, allowing McCarthy to have an extra year to work on his mechanics.
If Darnold had faltered this season, they could move on to McCarthy. If he had succeeded, they could trade their 2024 first-round pick.
Darnold’s final two games, Week 18 in Detroit and the first-round playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams, likely spooked the Vikings enough to pass on him. He looked panicked against the Detroit Lions in the final game of the season and finished 18 of 41 for 166 yards in a 31-9 loss. Darnold was 25 of 40 for 245 yards with a touchdown and a pick against the Rams in the playoffs, but he took nine sacks.
Still, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is an analytics-forward former Wall Street trader. Shouldn’t he see Darnold’s final two games as an outlier, or at least noisy variance? He also emphasizes versatility, which is related to optionality. Good rosters have enough depth to move players in and out based on the situation. What better place to emphasize optionality than at quarterback?
Ultimately, Kevin O’Connell probably wanted to develop his own quarterback, rather than turn a reclamation project into his franchise player. Darnold reverted to his old footwork in Detroit and against the Rams in the playoffs, likely a product of his lousy development with the New York Jets and the Carolina Panthers. In J.J. McCarthy, O’Connell has a blank canvas.
However, we know what has happened since. Joshua Dobbs threw a hospital ball to Justin Jefferson in Vegas, ending his run as the Passtronaut. The Vikings lost six of their last seven games and missed the playoffs. Still, they had already won seven games, putting Drake Maye out of reach. Instead, they drafted McCarthy, who experienced significant growing pains in his first season.
Ironically, O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah leaned too much into their strengths this year. O’Connell turned Kirk Cousins into a winning quarterback and revived Sam Darnold’s career. Still, asking McCarthy, 23, to take a 14-win team to the next level was too much for the league’s youngest quarterback. Meanwhile, Adofo-Mensah had previously been successful in free agency, but this year’s class mostly flopped.
Now, Sam Darnold and Drake Maye will face off in the Super Bowl, while Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell haven’t won a playoff game since the Vikings hired them in 2022. The lesson is that it’s okay to tank in a lost season and always choose optionality over fixating on a single path. Because, no matter how much faith a team has in its players, we all know that the best-laid plans often go astray.