Young Vikings cornerbacks will be tested by NFL's toughest slate of quarterbacks

One of the more interesting directions we went on the most recent Access Vikings podcast was a discussion of the Vikings' youth and inexperience at cornerback.

As a function of the three Vikings corners with the most snaps in 2019 — veterans Xavier Rhodes, Trae Waynes and Mackensie Alexander — all leaving via free agency in the offseason and the method by which cap-strapped Minnesota went about replacing them, which was largely through the draft, the Vikings enter 2020 with the least experienced cornerback group I can remember them having.

The top five corners on the current depth chart have combined to make nine NFL starts: 2018 first-round pick Mike Hughes has five of them and 2018 undrafted free agent Holton Hill has four while 2019 seventh-round pick Kris Boyd and of course rookies Jeff Gladney and Cameron Dantzler have zero.

Our Ben Goessling made a strong point on the podcast, noting that there tends to be a preference — particularly among the media — for the known over the unknown. We label the secondary a question mark because these players lack experience, but that doesn't mean they won't succeed. They're just unproven at this level.

And those corners will have the benefit of playing with veteran safeties Harrison Smith and Anthony Harris, perhaps the best tandem in the NFL and a duo that can cover for a lot of on-the-job mistakes.

Still, this is unusual for a Mike Zimmer-coached Vikings team. When Waynes was a first-round pick in 2015, for example, the Vikings very much eased him in and had the luxury of veteran security blankets Terence Newman and Captain Munnerlyn to take the vast majority of snaps along with Rhodes.

Unless the Vikings add a top-four veteran late in camp after roster cut downs, they won't be in that position this year. Again, that doesn't mean it won't work. An injection of youth after last year's secondary regression could be a good thing.

That said, you could probably talk yourself into it being a more tenable position if the Vikings were set to face a soft schedule full of mediocre quarterbacks in 2020.

But the complete opposite is true. In fact, at least according to The Athletic's Mike Sando's ranking of teams and the opposing quarterbacks they will face, the Vikings are about to go against the very toughest QBs of any team in the NFL this season.

Sando rates five QBs in the top tier; the Vikings face four of them — Russell Wilson, Drew Brees, Deshaun Watson and Aaron Rodgers (twice) — while also going against second-tier QBs Tom Brady, Matthew Stafford (twice), Matt Ryan, Dak Prescott and Philip Rivers.

That's 11 of 16 games against some pretty good QBs (and it should be noted that Kirk Cousins is considered a third-tier QB in these rankings).

This is all on paper, and we should account for the potential for injuries, the decline of older quarterbacks and Zimmer's ability to scheme his way into favorable matchups as counterweights.

Still, the fact that the Vikings are employing a set of very raw corners against a group of very good quarterbacks this season is something to watch. How well those young corners hold up could very well determine their fate in 2020.