This is actually 2 questions:
- How do you proceed after the bye
- How do you proceed after the season
As you can imagine, Vikings fans have a lot of opinions here. You have your Kirk loyalists, your tank commanders and even your Dobbs defenders.
It’s a bit of a cluster, but I am confident /r/nfl will have the answers.
Let’s start with the 1st question. You have 3 options here:
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Start Mullens: very likely this will give you the best chance to make a playoff run, but let’s be real… you are not going to do anything when you get there.
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Start Dobbs: Maybe you could delude yourself into thinking last week was a blip and not his luck running out?
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Start Hall: He looked good in the couple of series he played, why don’t you see what you have to get a more accurate picture for our next question?
Now on to question 2, again we have 3 options here:
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Resign Kirk, make no mistake, you will not get a discount. Let’s assume it’s a market rate deal. He will be 36 for most of next season coming off the injury.
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Fuck them picks and try to get in spitting distance of one of the top QB prospects in the 2024 draft.
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Let it fall to you, take a QB in the top 50ish picks, have Hall and rookie QB dual it out, let the chips fall where they may.
It’s a complicated situation, and we need answers. Obviously Kwesi is here religiously so give him some good advice.
even if Dobbs didn’t put up an absolute stinker, did anyone really think they were gonna sneak into the playoffs from a low wildcard spot? maybe you get lucky and knock off whatever dogshit NFC south team takes the division, then you have likely the Lions, Eagles, 49ers, or Cowboys to get through on the road.
Dobbs playing well enough to keep the team in the playoff race was a nice surprise but this was always going to end. roll with Dobbs, get a proper evaluation on him as a 17 game starter and address this in the offseason properly, not midseason.
The NFC is very weak and the Vikings probably only need to win 3 of their remaining games to win, which is doable. This wouldn’t be a question if Kirk wasn’t injured. I’ll maintain he would’ve won MVP this season if he didn’t get injured.
I mean, they’re still more likely than not to get the 7th seed. If they hadn’t blown the Bears game they’d have been at like 85%. The middle of the NFC is terrible this year.