EAGAN — In the days following the hiring of general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell, Adam Thielen was just like you.
He wondered whether the Minnesota Vikings’ direction was about to change following years of swinging for the fences. Would they drop a grenade on the roster and rebuild from scratch or build around the pieces in place for another run at it?
“Trying to figure out what that means, what they’re thinking, how they feel about me individually, how they feel about the other guys and how they feel about this team,” Thielen recalled. “You definitely think about those things when you’re sitting there at your house in the offseason.”
They could have traded players like Thielen, Kirk Cousins, Danielle Hunter and Harrison Smith in order to stockpile draft capital for the future, but instead elected to rework contracts and sign veterans Patrick Peterson, Za’Darius Smith, Harrison Phillips and Jordan Hicks. While the GM used the term “competitive rebuild” in an early press conference, the offseason moves spoke louder than words.
“I feel like they’ve made that very clear to us from the beginning that they weren’t going to blow things up, that they thought we had a good football team and that they thought we could win football games in this league and go to where we want to go,” Thielen said.
Through eight weeks, the decision to keep the core in place and push forward has paid off. The Vikings are sitting at the top of the NFC North and have an opportunity on Sunday against Washington to go 7-1 for the first time since 2009.
Vikings management doubled down on their hot start by trading for Detroit tight end TJ Hockenson — a move that included sending a 2023 second-round draft pick to the Lions. For Thielen, it reaffirmed the message of belief in this group.
“It just kind of adds to that, saying, ‘Hey, we believe in you guys,” he said. “We believe we can be a really good football team, and this is only going to help that cause.’”
Patrick Peterson made a bet on the Vikings’ direction this offseason. With multiple offers from other teams, he elected to return to Minnesota, banking on the idea that they could flip the script from last season’s bevy of close losses.
“I felt like we were in a great position last year and we weren’t a very good situational football team,” Peterson said. “When I found out that the new GM wanted to keep the core of the team together, being around the locker room… why wouldn’t you want to be around a group of guys that have the same mentality and poise that you have?…There wasn’t another place that I’d rather spend the latter part of my career than with this organization.”
Peterson called it “rewarding” that his bet has paid off. The Vikings have a chance at the special season he was hoping for when he first arrived in Minnesota in 2021. How special could it be? Since 2000 there have been 34 teams to start 7-1. The average finish was 13 wins. Eleven of them reached the Super Bowl and six of them became Super Bowl champions.
The future Hall of Fame cornerback sees the Hockenson deal as a move that could get them over the hump. He mentioned the potential for opening up the offense and shoring up a weakness with Irv Smith Jr. down for the foreseeable future. He also views it as another sign that management senses the moment and is making a play to strike while the iron is hot.
“When you have this opportunity that we have being 6-1 and at the top of the division…if there’s a guy out there that we feel like can improve our team, why not?” Peterson said. “Why not go out there and try to win this thing? Every year you go out there and suit up you have aspirations of winning a championship and now…we have the recipe and we feel like that was one of the missing pieces to help us get over the hump.”
Vikings history would suggest these chances only come along every so often. After going to the NFC Championship game in 2000, they went 5-11 the next year. In 2010 Brett Favre returned but it wasn’t the same and they missed the playoffs. Same goes for 2017’s follow-up act. Veteran players understand that everything is not-for-long.
“I tell the guys all the time, you have to embrace these moments because you can fall off the map next year,” Peterson said.
