How the Vikings are affecting the Denver Broncos’ plans at QB

The Minnesota Vikings are playing games with the Denver Broncos’ hearts. How are they affecting the Broncos’ QB pursuits?

The Minnesota Vikings need to quit playing games with the Denver Broncos’ hearts.

Are the Vikings going to re-sign Case Keenum? Teddy Bridgewater? Are they going to pursue Kirk Cousins? Why did they steal Kyle Sloter?

There are so many important questions in regards to the Vikings and their quarterback position, and it seems like whatever they do is going to obviously have a very major impact on what the Broncos do.

For instance, if the Vikings re-sign Case Keenum, it would seem the path is relatively cleared for the Broncos to be Kirk Cousins’ top option in free agency.

If they sign Cousins, then the Broncos could become a top option for Keenum.

If they sign Cousins and Keenum signs elsewhere, then does Bridgewater become an option for the Broncos?

Those are all options currently on the table, and depending on how you read into things, the Vikings have not ruled anything out, but they seem to be leaning toward keeping one of their own quarterbacks, probably Keenum (though they like Bridgewater) so they can do what the Broncos did a few years back and keep the core of their defense together.

The only difference between this Vikings team and that Broncos team is, that Broncos team had a quarterback retire and there were few viable options available on the free agent market or late in the first round of the draft, whereas the Vikings have a chance to secure a player that just helped them win a bunch of games.

I’m going to post a couple of interesting things here I think can shed some light on why it sounds like the Vikings are leaning toward keeping an in-house option…

Now, in addition to Zimmer saying what he did above, he also questioned whether or not the Vikings would be getting the Keenum from this past season, or the Keenum from his time with the Rams.

That was a pretty harsh thing to ask publicly like that, but at the same time, it’s on all of our minds.

When you listen to what Florio has to say, his logic makes sense. He says in that video essentially that he was told by Rick Spielman that the Vikings want to have their situation at quarterback figured out by March 14th. He took that to mean they were leaning toward having someone in-house.

Though the NFL’s legal tampering period happens starting March 14th, they will be able to gauge Keenum’s market this week at the Scouting Combine, and perhaps get some figures from other teams that could be in the bidding for his services.

Florio said that no team is going to be willing to pay Keenum as much as the Vikings, and he doesn’t foresee him making $20 million on the open market.

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That would allow the Vikings to re-sign key players on their defense and remain flexible with the cap.

Kirk Cousins would not necessarily allow them to do that. Like with the Broncos, it would require sacrifices, but for the Vikings, they would be sacrificing young players entering their prime, while the Broncos would sacrifice players who are close to or over 30, and near the end of their contract.

There’s still obviously a chance the Vikings will be strong in pursuit of Kirk Cousins, as has been reported. If that’s the case, it’s hard to see him turning them down, unless for some reason he doesn’t mesh well with the coaching staff there, or his wife doesn’t like the idea of winter in Minneapolis with a new baby, or whatever the case may be.

Those things matter in free agency.

Ultimately, I don’t know what the Vikings will end up doing, but these are some very interesting insights. My guess is, they would like to keep the majority of this band together rather than push all the chips to the middle of the table and sacrifice some key players along the way. If that’s the case, you can’t count out Denver for Kirk Cousins just yet.