Coaches are getting let go quickly. Several of the candidates could be possible replacements for Brian Flores should he go elsewhere. Jonathan Gannon might be nice. Who do you like if Flores leaves?
The QB situation is, once again, unsettled and some would say a mess. I will always remain hopeful.
Minnesota Vikings News and Links
The concerning report comes from Jon Krawczynski, the longtime Minnesota sports reporter who specializes in covering the Timberwolves and the NBA. In an interview with KFAN-FM 100.3’s Dan Barreiro on Monday, Krawczynski indicated that Flores could leave the Vikings in a lateral move as a defensive coordinator because of whatever is allegedly happening behind closed doors.
“The way that I’ve looked at it and talked to people about it over the last several weeks, it has changed, to me, the temperature of the water in a way. I’ll say it in two ways. One is, I was sort of under the impression that, given Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the league and given how things ended in Miami and the confrontational nature of that, the chances of him getting another head coaching job was very minimal, with how owners operate. That said, it does seem like there’s real momentum toward a job with the Raiders, with Tom Brady hiring him as the head coach and maybe Brian Daboll or something like that as the offensive coordinator. I think that is more real than anything that I expected to be discussed from a head coaching standpoint at this point,” Krawczynski began.
“The second part… there does seem to be some sort of murmurings of discontent, of a butting of heads behind the scenes with other people in the organization, that there is some intrigue about, even if he didn’t get the Raiders job or another head coaching job, that there still is a real possibility that Flores could leave for another defensive coordinator job.”
“I can’t tell you the exact nature of the conflict, or of the drama behind the scenes, but there is something going on that does lead me to believe that it is not a foregone conclusion that he would stay here to be a coordinator, that he could leave to go elsewhere, which I think would be a disaster for the Vikings, and it would be a terrible look,” Krawczynski said.
“But yeah, there is something going on there. Maybe, maybe it’s a little bit of negotiating on Flores’ part to try and get every last bit of dollars that are coming his way. But there does seem to be some real talk behind the scenes of, you know what, it’s not all hunky-dory behind the scenes with Brian Flores and with this organization, and there are some other things that they have to navigate before they could get a deal done with him.”
“I wish I could give specific problems that are happening, and I don’t have them,” he said. “I just can’t say because I don’t have the specifics of it nailed down enough to report it and say it with confidence.
“What I can say is that, yes, there have been conversations around his situation, and just, like, I’ll say the whispers that everything is not completely right in that world. And it is more than, it’s not just a simple, that if Brian Flores does not take a head coaching job, he’s absolutely 100% sure gonna lock down here with the Vikings. There’s just more to it. Certainly, Alec and I and others will be looking into that more, but yeah, it’s kind of been a talking point around the team that’s been circulating for the last 10 days or so.”
Now the Vikings appear to be hoping to recreate that success story. They’re signing standout Canadian Football League DT Jaylon Hutchings to a futures deal, according to John Hodge of 3DownNation.
Hutchings recorded 8 sacks and 39 total tackles for the Calgary Stampeders across 17 games this past season. He was named to the All-CFL team and was the highest-graded defensive player in the entire league by Pro Football Focus at 90.7.
Hutchings, who just turned 26, is a Texas native who played at Texas Tech from 2018-23. He had 8.5 sacks and 19.5 total TFL over his final three college seasons. Hutchings went undrafted and had a brief offseason stint with the Bears in 2024 before joining the Stampeders. He’s listed at 6 feet tall and 304 pounds.
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Hutchings isn’t the only member of the Calgary Stampeders who the Vikings are signing to a futures deal. They’re also adding his teammate, linebacker Jacob Roberts, according to Hodge’s colleague Justin Dunk.
Roberts, 24, recorded 93 tackles and 4 sacks for the Stampeders this past season. He’s a 6’1”, 233-pound LB who went undrafted in 2024 after spending four years at FCS North Carolina A&T and one year at Wake Forest. Roberts’ 83 tackles for the Demon Deacons in 2023 included 6 sacks and 10 total TFL. He’ll compete to make the Vikings’ roster as a depth linebacker and special teams player.
The Atlanta Falcons have restructured Kirk Cousins’ contract, setting up a March 13 deadline for a decision on his future. In all likelihood, he’ll be released with a post-June 1 designation to help Atlanta’s cap situation. And with the Vikings looming as a theoretical suitor, this move may just have opened the door for Cousins’ return to Minnesota.
The move by the Falcons, which was first reported by ESPN’s Field Yates on Tuesday, reduces Cousins’ 2026 base salary from $35 million to just $2.1 million. That $32.9 million difference goes into 2027, giving him a $67.9 million guarantee for that season. That guarantee will vest on March 13, the third day of the new league year, which makes that an obvious deadline for the Falcons to either release Cousins or work out a new contract to keep him. Given the presence of Michael Penix Jr. and the potential for salary cap relief, the former seems more logical.
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If Cousins does become a free agent, a reunion with the Vikings could make quite a bit of sense. He is obviously more than familiar with Minnesota, having spent six seasons there. The last two came with Kevin O’Connell, who he had previously worked with in Washington in 2017. Cousins knows the offense and many of the players on it, from Justin Jefferson to Brian O’Neill and numerous others.
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Why it might not make sense would be if Cousins is adamant about wanting an opportunity to be a starter in 2026. Because Cousins’ ceiling is clearly limited, the Vikings would likely give McCarthy every opportunity to win the job. Whether or not Cousins would be willing to be a backup in the organization where he spent six years as the starter would have to be discussed. With that said, at this point in his career, he seems unlikely to find any opportunity to be an unquestioned NFL starter.
The question Minnesota must answer is this: Does the team seek competent insurance against injuries and/or more struggles for JJ McCarthy entering his third NFL season, or does it want a viable starting option to truly compete for the QB1 job in camp who also has the potential to remain the answer under center for years into the future?
For example, if the Vikings favor a veteran mentor on a one-year insurance policy to give McCarthy full buy-in for at least the start of his third season, then a player like Russell Wilson makes sense.
Another QB who fits that mold is Joe Flacco, who announced Monday that he does not intend to retire and made some other telling comments indicating that a landing spot like Minnesota offers the precise set of circumstances he’s seeking.
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Flacco spoke with media members on January 5 and made his career path and preferences exceedingly clear.
“Joe Flacco said he’s not considering retirement and is hopeful he can be a little more selective when looking at his next shot,” Joe Dannenman of FOX19 Cincinnati reported via X.
“I love being in the locker room, I love being part of a group of guys like this in general,” Flacco said. “And I’ve had a lot of fun here the last couple months.”
The Athletic’s Alec Lewis warned the Vikings about improving their quarterback play during the 2026 season in a recent article.
Lewis commended superstar receiver Justin Jefferson for displaying real maturity while dealing with Minnesota’s turbulent quarterback position throughout 2025. He warned that it would be a mistake to take the same approach again.
“Expecting Jefferson to accept another season like this one with such offensive ineptitude would be ill-advised,” Lewis wrote on Tuesday. “This is, in part, what makes the forthcoming quarterback decisions massive.”
Lewis noted that Jefferson has only made two playoff appearances during his six seasons in the NFL. He will certainly have his eyes set on postseason success in 2026.
Few analysts have a better pulse on the Vikings locker room than Ben Leber, who spent five seasons playing linebacker for the team in the late 2000s. Leber was taken aback by McCarthy’s behavior in the final game of the regular season, noting the “optics” and “theatrics” as troubling.
“I don’t love the theatrics of it. I don’t love the optics of it. There’s so much drama that’s that’s surrounding that you don’t need to place a towel over your hand,” Leber said. “It’s not melting. There’s not a bone sticking out. It’s not disfigured. It’s not harming anybody by looking at it.”
Leber, who later praised McCarthy for his natural playmaking ability, gave reason why the optics of his hand injury are vital, given his injury history.
“I think that he’s got a lot to learn about just the body language, the behavior, the outward optics of how things look,” Leber added. “To pull yourself off mid-series after one pass play in which it seemed everything was fine. … Me personally, I would probably push through it as much as I could, you know, get through this series. And if you have a couple throws where you are errant and you are inaccurate and it looks like you can’t grip the football, I would choose to have them pull me off the field.
“I don’t love what it kind of means for him. I mean, for a guy that has battled injuries and has this mark on him as far as a reputation of not being healthy, I don’t know. I would have gutted through it.”
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However, Leber isn’t out on McCarthy despite a tough first season as a starter.
Leber compared Carthy’s playmaking to Lamar Jackson, noting the Baltimore Ravens quarterback’s ability to overcome sub-par performances with a handful of plays that can tilt a game.
“Those are plays that I feel like McCarthy can make. There’s an elusiveness. There’s a playmaking ability,” Leber said. “There’s a little kid playing backyard football that is inside of him that I actually like. I think it’s a positive thing. We saw a little bit of yesterday. I actually think that means that he can grow into what they want him to be as far as a pocket passer and commanding the huddle a little bit more and making some of those throws.“
However, McCarthy must mature on and off the field and improve his decision-making with the ball in his hand after throwing more interceptions (12) than touchdowns (11) this season.
“I think he’s still wildly immature mentally. I think to be a leader, I think that matters. And I’m not so sure that’s something that he’s going to mature into in his time here — if he’s got if he’s got a long runway, which I think that runway is shrinking dramatically,” Leber said, referring to McCarthy’s rookie deal expiring in 2028. “So I’m still on the still lean positively, but it definitely will waver depending on who we bring in this offseason.”
J.J. McCarthy’s season ended familiarly: progression halted by a needless mistake, followed by an apology, followed by a worsening injury, followed by apologists pretending that the larger pattern isn’t staring them in the face.
Early Sunday, with nothing on the line but professionalism, McCarthy delivered a stiff-arm to a Packers defender and then a little extra. An undisciplined taunting penalty that turned a manageable down-and-distance into another self-inflicted wound that short-circuited the game’s opening drive.
Coach Kevin O’Connell called it what it was: a post-snap blunder that set the offense back. McCarthy called it excitement, selfishness, something that “can’t happen again.”
Therein lies the rub. There’s always something like that happening. Not always in the same way, but always at the wrong time.
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And McCarthy? He was productive and erratic, briefly. And then he was gone. Again.
Fourteen completions. One hundred eighty-two yards. A solid first half. Then swelling in his fractured throwing hand, another early exit, another afternoon handed off to someone else. Max Brosmer finished the game. The Vikings finished the season. McCarthy finished another chapter defined less by growth than by interruption.
This was supposed to be the evaluation year, when the Vikings finally learned what they had in the former first-round pick. Instead, they’re learning availability is elusive, consistency is not his calling card, and discipline seems optional when emotions run hot.
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McCarthy missed seven games outright and chunks of two others. Knee surgery wiped out his rookie year. This season added new ailments to the list, capped by a finale he couldn’t finish. Unlucky is becoming unreliable. Development is morphing into perpetual work in progress.
It would be franchise malpractice to bury McCarthy under the stadium. But Minnesota’s talent evaluators, from general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to O’Connell on down, have a real mess on their hands, with job security lashed to a franchise quarterback whose ability to fulfill his promise may have to take a back seat to real progress.
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Meanwhile, the Vikings’ offense continues to orbit around Jefferson’s brilliance, asking him to drag quarterbacks to relevance. Jefferson reached 1,000 yards for the sixth straight season, a routine accomplishment no one should take for granted.
That should terrify the front office. Generational receivers don’t stay patient forever, especially when their prime is spent catching passes from a rotating cast of “almosts.”
This offseason, the Vikings must clear cap space, reinforce the offensive line, and shore up the secondary. Fine. But none of it matters if they continue to cross their fingers at quarterback.
They don’t need a savior. They need a professional. Someone who stays on the field. Someone who doesn’t turn second-and-short into second-and-long with a lapse of judgment. Someone whose biggest question isn’t whether he’ll finish the game.
Acknowledging that might not be McCarthy in 2026 is smarter than pretending otherwise. This doesn’t mean giving up on him entirely. It means acknowledging reality. The Vikings cannot enter another season with McCarthy as the unquestioned plan and hope durability magically appears. Hope is not a depth chart.
Rodgers disappointed in first season with Minnesota Vikings
When asked about his view of the season, at large, following Minnesota’s finale last week vs Green Bay, Rodgers told Darren Wolfson (KSTP) on Purple Daily (SKOR North) that he was disappointed in how he performed, but that he was proud of the defense, as a unit.
When pressed on why he didn’t look back on his first season as a Viking fondly, Rodgers pointed to that week three contest against the Bengals, noting that he did not handle the success of that day very well, nor did the fans, who then expected that kind of performance from Rodgers the rest of the season… and they never got it.
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“I thought it was interesting that Isaiah Rogers told me he was disappointed in his play this year. A look at his PFF grade, for whatever that’s worth, it seems like he had a pretty good year. In fact, I suppose you could debate. To me, it’s Eric Wilson. But if you wanted to make the case that Isaiah Rogers was their best free agent signing last March, you can make a case.”
“[Rodgers] said…that after that unreal performance week three against the Bengals, that it was hard for him, like the outside noise, like I think he thought people expected like more of that. And like, that’s so rare. Yeah, and I think he was battling that.”
“He still thinks about some of the plays he didn’t make against the Eagles and against the Chargers. Like I said, hey, what stands out as you think about 2025, what stands out? And he went to the Eagles and the Chargers, the negative, not the positive. And so, you know, I don’t know how you want to view that because to me there’s plenty of positives to talk about with Isaiah Rogers, but I found that interesting.”
Darren Wolfson – Purple Daily (SKOR North)
The top free agent the Jets are set to lose is star running back Breece Hall. Hall was the team’s top player all season and routinely voiced his desire to stay with the Jets throughout the season.
Still, FanSided’s Cody Williams predicted the Jets would lose Hall to the Minnesota Vikings in free agency.
“Amid the Jets’ fire sale at the trade deadline, it was perhaps most shocking that Breece Hall stayed put in New York,” Williams wrote. “Some have speculated that means they’ll look to retain him — but are the Jets really in the business right now of being able to pay a running back?
“I don’t think so, especially with Hall projected to get something in the $12 million AAV range that Josh Jacobs got. But with Aaron Jones aging and Jordan Mason not working out, he’d make a ton of sense around J.J. McCarthy moving forward under Kevin O’Connell.”
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Note: I believe Hall with get tagged. Etienne and Walker as well.
Cap Space Work
2026 Cap : (-$38,288,060)
Cut or Trade Hockenson
Cut Jones
Cut Hargrave
Cut Kelly
Extend O’Neill 3 yr 66M
Restructure Jefferson (max)
Restructure Greenard (max)
Extend Ryan Wright 2 yr 6M
Give Zavier Scott, Taki Taimani, & Bo Richter the ERFA tender
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Updated 2026 Cap : $35,554,440 (43 players under contract only)
2027 Cap : $30,095,773
Possible 2027 moves … Cut Allen & Metellus would take 2027 cap to $55,940,773
Another move depending on the Hitman
Give Harrison Smith a 1 yr 5M deal (with 3M signing bonus)
What free agents would you target with about 35M in cap space?
Yore Mock
Trade Partner: EaglesSent: 2.49Received: 2.54, 4.122
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Pick. 18 Mansoor Delane CB LSU 6’1” 187Pick. 54 Emmanuel McNeil-Warren S Toledo 6’2” 202Pick. 82 Domonique Orange DL Iowa State 6’3” 325Pick. 97 Jake Slaughter IOL Florida 6’5” 308Pick. 122 Nick Singleton RB Penn State 6’0” 226Pick. 161 Jack Endries TE Texas 6’4” 240Pick. 195 C.J. Daniels WR Miami (FL) 6’2” 202Pick. 234 Red Murdock LB Buffalo 6’3” 235Pick. 244 Bud Clark S TCU 6’2” 185
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