The dominoes, ultimately, only fall once.
Would Kirk Cousins still be here if Vikings had hired Ryan Poles as GM?
It's interesting food for thought as the Vikings prepare to face a Bears team whose fate is intertwined with their own.
October 7, 2022 at 4:52PM
We lack the power to turn back time and rewrite history. So all we are left with are the abilities to wonder and speculate about how things might have turned out had different decisions been made, how one fallen domino might have led to the next.
But that doesn't stop us. In fact, the inability to change history only deepens our desire to re-imagine it, for better or worse.
Star Tribune Vikings beat writer Ben Goessling and I played a version of that what-if game on Friday's Daily Delivery podcast.
The upshot, which we arrived at in meandering fashion, was this: Would Kirk Cousins still be the quarterback of the Vikings this season if Minnesota had hired Ryan Poles as its general manager?
The question is particularly relevant as the Vikings prepare on Sunday to host the Bears — the organization that did hire Poles as GM, with the Vikings opting to hire Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
In Chicago, Poles has orchestrated a more thorough roster reconstruction than Adofo-Mensah has authored in Minnesota.
The Vikings labeled their effort a "competitive rebuild" and opted to keep a lot of their core intact. The biggest piece of that was giving quarterback Kirk Cousins a one-year extension through 2023. It is paying off so far, with Minnesota sitting at 3-1 — one of the eight NFL teams that currently has a winning record.
The Bears are 2-2, but they seem far closer to a traditional, non-competitive rebuild than the Vikings in this moment.
Given the route Poles has gone in Chicago, what might he have done with similar power in Minnesota? Would he have plunged into the offseason ready to trade Cousins to the highest bidder while also shedding other high-priced veteran contracts?
Perhaps.
But we also should consider that the Bears, who went 6-11 last year and have a second-year QB on a team-friendly contract (Justin Fields) are in a more natural spot to rebuild with youth than a Vikings team that was arguably a play or two away from making the postseason each of the last two years.
We also need to take into account the distaste Vikings ownership had for a bigger roster reconstruction.
Still, it's always entertaining to wonder — just as it was during the 2021 draft when the Vikings perhaps had some interest in picking Fields.
The Vikings, at least in the present, should be just fine with how things worked out in both cases.
But those future dominoes have yet to fall.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
