One month from now, we should know the Vikings’ plan at quarterback

The Super Bowl is over. Taylor Swift won it all in her rookie season, a rarity in sports.

Joking aside, no league is better at creating off-field storylines than the NFL. Almost immediately after Patrick Mahomes rallied Kansas City to its third Super Bowl title in five years, league chatter shifted to what comes next.

The NFL Scouting Combine is in two weeks, and this year it holds particular intrigue in Minnesota as the Vikings figure to be continuing their due diligence on top players — most notably quarterbacks — who will either be available when they pick No. 11 or perhaps higher or lower if they trade up or down in the first round.

And March 13 — one month from now — marks the start of the new league year. Free agency begins as part of that, kicking off a whole new wave of speculation.

The Vikings have a lot of big decisions this offseason, as I talked about on Tuesday’s Daily Delivery podcast with Star Tribune beat writer Ben Goessling. One particularly resonant part of our conversation: We should know the Vikings’ QB plan by the time the league year begins in a month.

The reason: Kirk Cousins’ current contract has four void years tacked onto the end of it. He is set to become a free agent when the new league year begins.

If the Vikings are going to re-sign Cousins — which of course requires both sides to agree on a deal — they will get it done before the new league year begins. Otherwise, the entirety of the salary cap damage from those four void years ($28.5 million) will hit the Vikings’ cap in 2024.

They might decide to let Cousins walk, in which case that $28.5 million would hit the cap. But they wouldn’t let that date pass and then work to sign him afterward. It just wouldn’t make sense from a structural standpoint.

So by March 13, we should know whether Cousins is back or not. And that decision — which has pros and cons on both sides — will clarify what the Vikings are going to do in the draft.

While they could certainly keep Cousins and draft their QB of the future, it’s hard to see them trying to move way up in the draft in that scenario. Why? Cousins almost certainly will require at least a two-year deal to stay. Moving up to take a quarterback in, say, the Top 5 (realistically probably the Top 3) and then having him sit for two years behind Cousins would be a waste of resources.

My sense is this: The Vikings will either sign Cousins to a two-year deal while also drafting a QB lower than No. 11, or they will let him walk and try to take a big swing into the top 3.

Either way, we should know where they are headed a month from now.

Here are four more things to know today: