The End of the Vikings

This past week has been a tumultuous one for the Minnesota Vikings. Perhaps the most promising young team in the league, the Vikings received a devastating blow on Tuesday when emerging quarterback Teddy Bridgewater went down in practice with a gruesome knee injury. Though it could have been far, far worse, his dislocated knee and torn ACL will force him to miss all of the 2016 season and leaves his status in question for 2017 as well.

That was just the beginning, as several days of anxious speculation culminated with the trade of a first and fourth round pick for Sam Bradford of the Eagles. There are a lot of angles to view this from, and a lot of thoughts bumping around in my head (both as a consumer of football and as a heartbroken Vikings fan). I try to lay out some of them below, looking at how this trade affects the Vikings both in 2016 and in years to come.

The State of the Backup Quarterback in the NFL

I followed the Vikings closely throughout training camp, and over the course of that time I heard one very common refrain. If Bridgewater went down, the Vikings were screwed. The quarterbacks behind Bridgewater on their roster did not impress during the offseason, and there were genuine worries about the position even before any of this happened. And when it became clear that Bridgewater was going to be out for the entire season, a lot of angry fingers were pointed squarely at Vikings GM Rick Spielman for not fortifying the position.

Forgetting the eventual trade for Bradford, I thought the criticism of Spielman was a bit harsh. First of all, the backup situation didn’t look nearly that miserable prior to training camp. They were returning their primary backup from last year in Shaun Hill, a 13 year NFL veteran with 34 career starts. He isn’t a quality NFL starter by any means, and his skills have definitely diminished as he’s aged, but he is the sort of veteran presence that all coaches like to have in their locker room.

Hill was going to be the number two for the Vikings this year, but it wasn’t always planned that way. Following an impressive performance in minicamp, second year passer Taylor Heinicke was expected to step up and claim that role for himself. And he likely would have, if he hadn’t shown up to training camp with a severed ligament in his foot after attempting to kick down a glass door. He still isn’t fully healthy, and he likely won’t be available until the fourth or fifth week of the season.

That left the Vikings in a clearly terrible situation when Bridgewater went down. The four quarterbacks on their roster were a veteran with a barely functional arm, an undrafted free agent in a walking boot, a quarterback most famous for missing time in college with “the yips”, and someone they had to resign after cutting him hours before Bridgewater went down.

It wasn’t a good position to be in, but it raises an interesting question. What exactly would have been a good position to be in? The Vikings were looking at a season ruined by the loss of their starting quarterback, but how many teams wouldn’t have been ruined if the same thing happened to them?

It’s not secret that the quarterback position has become more and more important over the past twenty years, but the Bridgewater injury reveals an interesting side effect of this. As starting quarterbacks have become more valuable, backup quarterbacks have actually become less valuable. Teams are so dependent on the position that even a small slip in quality can sink a season, and it is almost impossible to imagine any of the league’s current backups taking over and leading his team to a championship.

At any given time there are probably 10-15 quarterbacks in the league capable of winning a Super Bowl. Bridgewater wasn’t in that class, but he had the chance to elevate his game to that level this season, a chance that the Vikings pinned their hopes on. And when people started listing the possible replacements available on the market, it became clear just how rare a commodity that sort of upside is. If Michael Vick was capable of winning a Super Bowl, he wouldn’t be a free agent. If Mark Sanchez could ride a quality defense as a game manager, he wouldn’t have lost his job to Trevor Siemian. Backup quarterbacks are backups because they can’t do the job of a starter, and the job of a starter is so crucial that even an average performance will leave a team without any hope of achieving their championship goals.

The common counter to this over the past few months has been to point to last year’s Super Bowl winners. And while there is no doubt that Peyton Manning was a below average quarterback, it’s a bit of a fallacy to claim this proves any sort of an exception.

The Broncos did win a championship with a mediocre passer, but they did it in a way that isn’t replicable. The defense they had was head and shoulders above anything the Vikings could put on the field this year, because it was head and shoulders above anything anyone could put on the field this year.

The 2015 Broncos were a historically great defensive unit, in a large part because of Manning. Players like DeMarcus Ware, TJ Ward, and Aqib Talib would never have signed below market free agent deals if it wasn’t for Manning, and the same can be said for offensive players like Evan Mathis and Emmanuel Sanders. The way this roster was constructed is not something anyone else can replicate, because no one else has the opportunity to sign the greatest quarterback of all time as a street free agent. The 2015 version of Peyton Manning may not have had much to do with Denver’s Super Bowl victory, but it never would have been possible without the 2013 version of Peyton Manning.

So does that mean there is no value in a backup quarterback? Not necessarily. There is something to be gained from having a quality second option, just not in the circumstances the Vikings are in. A backup is valuable in situations that require them for only a brief period of time, to stabilize things for two or three games before the starter returns. They’re useful doing the sort of thing AJ McCarron had to do for the Bengals last year, or what Jimmy Garoppolo is being asked to do for the Patriots this year. If either of these teams saw their quarterback go down for the whole year, their championship hopes would disappear, much as Minnesota’s did when Bridgewater was lost.

The Vikings weren’t favorites to win the Super Bowl, but they had an outside chance with Bridgewater at quarterback. That chance disappeared the moment he went down, and there was no available solution to this problem. The season had ended before it even began, and that remains true even now, after they made the disastrous trade for the best option they could have found.

The Trade

This was a move of desperation, and it’s one that is difficult to really wrap our heads around. The Vikings gave up a lot for a fairly mediocre quarterback, surrendering a first round pick and a fourth round pick that could move up to the second or third if the Vikings are successful with Bradford. The history of trading first round picks is extremely ugly, and on face value this looks like a terrible move.

But when you look a little deeper, this is still a terrible move. If we ignore the compensation the Vikings gave up, you can understand the reasoning behind trading for Bradford. Stylistically similar to Bridgewater, Bradford can do a lot of the same things that took the Vikings to the postseason last year. Of all the quarterbacks who might have been available, he is clearly the best option, a capable starter among a list of unproven young players, veteran journeymen, and Mark Sanchez.

Bradford was the best option, but that doesn’t make him a good option. Above I said that there are only 10-15 quarterbacks capable of winning a championship, and Bradford certainly isn’t among them. He has been fundamentally limited since the moment he entered the NFL, and he has seen his potential shrivel after years of mediocrity and cumulative injuries. And even though he is coming off the best year of his career—and he will now have the best running back, receiving corps, and defense he has ever played with—there is no reason to believe a 28 year old veteran can take the same sort of step forward the Vikings were counting on from the 23 year old Bridgewater.

Bradford is a clear step up from the other quarterbacks on Minnesota’s roster, in that he is actually a capable and reliable starter. But he is not a replacement for Bridgewater, and he does not change the fact that Minnesota’s championship hopes for the season have gone up in flames. He may add a couple wins over the course of the year, and he probably makes the Vikings a playoff team again, but he doesn’t raise the limited ceiling put in place above their head.

Of course, this is just my opinion, and clearly the Vikings feel differently. This move reeks of desperation, from a team that believes they are sitting in a Super Bowl window that could close at any moment. And from a certain perspective, they might have a point. Right now the Vikings are a team in transition. They are the run first, physically pounding team that made the playoffs behind Adrian Peterson in 2012, and they are also the open, athletic team that was set up to dominate the league in 2018. The first window is closing, and the second window is still just hypothetical, so it’s almost understandable that they would feel the need to go all in while they still have Peterson to lead their offense.

If the Vikings had been able to add a genuine top caliber quarterback, then I understand them paying whatever price is necessary. If they’d had to give up a first round pick for Philip Rivers or Drew Brees, I would be leaping in celebration of that move. But Bradford is not that caliber of player, and it looks like they just pushed all their chips into the center of the table while holding a pair of fives.

As distasteful as it is to say, this is a problem that probably didn’t have a solution. 2016 was a promising year for Minnesota, but the smart move after losing Bridgewater would have been to just give up on the season. Spare any valuable assets, let the season play out, and hope that they could add new talent through the draft next year, in time for Bridgewater’s return and the emergence of their new window. No team wants to sacrifice a season, especially what is likely the last season with the team of a franchise player and future Hall of Famer, but in this case it was the only reasonable move they could have made.

Long Term Implications

I made a major assumption in the top section, one that could change the calculus of this entire situation. If Bridgewater is going to be back at full strength in 2017, then everything I said above is clear. But if that is not the case, it becomes a lot harder to justify punting two straight seasons. Right now there is no clear answer to this question, and it's understandable that the Vikings organization is terrified by this uncertainty.

That is one advantage of the Bradford acquisition. His two year contract perfectly aligns with the worst case scenario for Bridgewater’s rehab, and it gives them something close to a solution if they need someone to roll over into next year. He is under contract for a fairly reasonable price, and he gives the Vikings something to lean on if things go poorly.

But even if they can bring him back next year, there remains the questions of whether they want to. Two years of a quarterback who can’t lead a team to a championship is no better than one year of a quarterback who can’t lead a team to a championship, and if they’re stuck with Bradford for two years, that’s two years of their peak that is lost.

But once again, there really isn’t a better solution. The path forward for the Vikings was very clear, until it changed in a single instant based on a random piece of injury luck. This team is set up for championship contention over the next five years, and that window could very easily have snapped shut.

The uncertainty is the hardest part. We don’t know how serious Bridgewater’s injury really is. We don’t know when he’ll be back, or what he will look like when he returns. He isn’t dependent on his mobility to the extent a player like Russell Wilson or Cam Newton is, but his ability to move behind the line of scrimmage is one of the most crucial parts of his game. If that knee doesn’t fully heal, he may not be able to deliver accurately outside the pocket, or to maneuver inside of it to create open passing lanes.

This injury disrupts the development of a young quarterback who was ready to take the next step. He loses a year of play, a year of learning how to spot the subtle holes in defenses and exploit them. He has to spend at least a year letting his body recover, likely losing a lot of the muscle he added this offseason to improve his arm strength. Bridgewater may be back in 2017, but he likely won’t be back to his pre-injury level until 2018, and even then there is reason to be worried.

I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that this is the single most devastating injury any team has suffered since Tom Brady went down for the Patriots in 2008. Ever since the new rookie wage scale was introduced in 2011, there isn't a single more valuable asset in the league than a player on his rookie contract. And right now, no team is taking more advantage of that than the Vikings. Anthony Barr, Shariff Floyd, Xavier Rhodes, Eric Kendricks, and Stefon Diggs are making a combined $10 million this year. That’s five above average starters, each being paid roughly the same as an average kicker. Bridgewater himself was scheduled to make $1.8 million this year, offering possibly top fifteen production from the 43^rd highest quarterback salary in the league.

This sort of roster financial imbalance offers incredible advantages, but it is also temporary. The Seattle Seahawks are the perfect example of this, a team that built a championship roster out of young players supplemented by veteran free agents. They've since had to completely overhaul the makeup of their team, as Richard Sherman and Russell Wilson have collected massive contracts and they've been forced to let go of players like Bruce Irvin and Byron Maxwell. And even though they're still one of the top teams in the league, they are now working with much slimmer margins, lacking the depth that made them so consistent two years ago.

The Vikings were the heir apparent to this model, and they would have been in a perfect position to take a run at high priced veterans next year to fill out their roster while their core is still cheap. That window is now done. Rhodes and Floyd will be free agents after next year. Barr, Kendricks, and Diggs will need new contracts a year after that. And even before next season begins the Vikings will need to give Bridgewater a significant raise or a contract extension to keep him from becoming a free agent after 2017.

They still have a chance of a championship if Bridgewater can recover in a couple years, but it just got a lot harder. They won’t have the flexibility to add players through free agency, and they may have to let some of their young talent go once they become too expensive. And this is where the sacrifice of the first round pick really hurts. That was the sort of asset they will desperately need down the road, the opportunity to add a young, cheap player once their stars become expensive.

This is the true tragedy of this situation. The Vikings lost potentially the next two seasons, and they have now missed one of their championship windows. And in trying to fix this, they only made things worse. A week ago the Vikings had the brightest future of any team in the league, facing five years in which they would consistently be in contention for a championship. And though it’s impossible to know what the future holds, I think it’s very possible that we look back at this moment as the one that ruined a promising young franchise.