The Minnesota Vikings’ offense finally ran out of excuses against the Detroit Lions.
For weeks, the conversation around this team has centered on whether the defense was strong enough to carry everything else. That debate got a lot louder after Sunday, when Minnesota dropped a divisional game and the offense again failed to match the moment. The Vikings are still 6-1, but in an NFC North where everyone is over .500 and the schedule is about to get tougher, that loss tightened the margin for error.
The bigger concern is that the problems on offense are no longer theoretical. They showed up all at once.
Minnesota has been dealing with poor quarterback play, a lack of a running game, Will Fries’ horrific play at right guard, and questions about playcalling. Against Detroit, those issues were impossible to ignore.
Before the game on the Fox pre-game show, analyst Howie Long put the matchup in blunt terms. Long said that the Lions could essentially stumble into 20 points on an off day while the Vikings offense couldn’t keep up.
That’s exactly how it played out. Detroit scraped together 19 points, with most of that damage coming after halftime. Minnesota managed only 15.
The defense didn’t exactly cover itself in glory, either. Brian Flores’ group had one of its worst performances of the season, missing almost 20 tackles and watching Detroit’s run game take over in the second half.
But the Vikings defense has rescued the offense more than once this year. This time, when the offense needed to return the favor, it couldn’t.
That’s why the trade deadline matters here. With November 10 approaching, Minnesota has to look at the offense and decide what can actually be fixed.
A quarterback trade sounds flashy, and the Kirk Cousins reunion chatter has already started online, but that path looks unlikely. Cousins has history with Kevin O’Connell, but learning a new system in the middle of the season is no small thing.
On top of that, a quarterback deal would cost major draft capital, and Cousins is 38 with a non-guaranteed contract next season.
The same basic problem applies to playcalling. The offense has been worse than it has ever been under O’Connell, but there isn’t an obvious in-house replacement with playcalling experience ready to step in.
That leaves the Vikings with a much narrower set of realistic options, and both point toward the offensive line.
Fries has not played up to his $17.5 million-per-year contract. Even with Joe Huber, a second-year UDFA guard, next to him, Fries has been the weak spot.
Detroit repeatedly found him, isolated him, and overpowered him. His play hasn’t justified keeping him in the starting lineup, and Minnesota does have an out in his contract for next season.
The move should be made now.
Upgrading at guard would help in two places at once: pass protection and run blocking. The Vikings could target either a right guard or a center and shift Blake Brandel to right guard.
There has also been talk about Jonathan Taylor, and he would be the best player Minnesota could realistically land. But multiple teams are interested, so the Vikings would have to be aggressive to get him. Even then, adding a guard would still be necessary to get the most out of the offense.
Minnesota does not need to become a top-10 offense overnight. It just needs an attack that can regularly get to 20 points or more. Right now, that still looks like the missing piece.
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That is why the trade chatter around Indianapolis running back Jonathan Taylor has started to feel more than hypothetical, even if nothing official is in place. Any serious pursuit would come with real hurdles, from the cost in draft capital to the cap math needed to make it work, and those are the kinds of obstacles that can stall a splashy idea before it ever reaches the finish line. [Read more 🡒]