Kyle Sloter says his time with the Vikings came with a message he never expected: dial it back.
On The Victory Degree podcast, the former Minnesota quarterback said he was told to shrink his game during the preseason, not elevate it. Sloter spent years working for chances in the NFL, USFL, and XFL, and Minnesota gave him one of his biggest looks. He appeared in eight preseason games for the Vikings across 2018 and 2019 before the team waived him after the 2019 preseason.
According to Sloter, the instruction from the staff was blunt. “I was told, when I was at the Vikings at one point, that I needed to do less,” Sloter said. “That I needed to go out there and be worse in the preseason.”
He said he believes the reasoning behind that kind of message is simple: teams do not want a backup quarterback creating pressure for the starter. “They don’t want competition between a backup quarterback and a starter,” he said.
“Don’t want any controversy. They don’t want those things.”
Sloter also pointed to the money side of the equation. “Especially when you have a lot of guaranteed money on a guy that is going to play, no matter what.”
He did not name the player he was referring to, though Heavy suggested he may have meant Kirk Cousins, who was with Minnesota at the time. Cousins had signed the first fully guaranteed contract in NFL history, worth $84 million over three years. That link, however, remains an inference from the outlet and was not confirmed by Sloter.
Sloter said he rejected that approach entirely. “You have to play like a backup, and it just was never me,” he said. “It was never me to not go out there and compete.”
Minnesota’s quarterback picture looks very different now. The team’s depth chart has changed plenty since Sloter’s stint, and even J.J. McCarthy has moved on after the Vikings traded him to the Giants this season.
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