In just about twelve hours, teams around the National Football League will be able to start making contact with free agents, as the ridiculously-named “legal tampering” period will officially be upon us. The Minnesota Vikings are among those teams, and our SB Nation Reacts question for this week wanted you to tell us which position the Vikings should be focused on when the new league year kicks off on Wednesday.
Of the choices we gave you, the opinions were pretty spread out.
Of those who responded
to our poll, 32% believe that the Vikings should first look to address the cornerback position in free agency. Given that the Vikings went through last season with a cornerback group that doesn’t have a lot of star power, that’s a little bit of a surprise. . .well, to me it is, anyway, but in this league you can never have enough corners, so maybe you folks are seeing more than I am.
The safety and defensive line positions were right next to each other on the list, with safety coming in with 19% and the d-line with 18%. The pending retirement of Harrison Smith likely makes safety an urgent need, probably more urgent than cornerback, in my opinion. Then again, the fact that the Vikings are already cutting bait on their two big defensive line signings from last offseason in Jon Allen and Javon Hargrave might bump that up the list as well, even though the Vikings do have some promising young players on the front line.
Running back was pretty close to the second spot as well, with 16% of our voters giving that position the nod. Maybe I’m still a little old school in my thinking, but I still firmly believe that running back is a position you can save a bit on by getting a solid player through the draft rather than throwing big money at one in free agency. The Vikings have one solid back in Jordan Mason and a decent third option in Zavier Scott. If they could get a young, promising back to put on the depth chart where Aaron Jones used to be, that would be ideal, in my opinion.
A lot of folks went with “other,” as it picked up 15% of the vote, and in the comments section of the original post, I saw a lot of people mention the center spot. Outside of Tyler Linderbaum, who may reset the market at the position as far as salary goes, I’m not sure how much is going to be out there in free agency at the center spot. Would you be comfortable with the Vikings backing up the money truck to Linderbaum’s front door? That’s a subject that’s up for debate.
Overall, there are a lot of spots that the Vikings could be focused on in free agency once things get underway on Monday morning. We’ll be here bringing you all of the moves. . .rumored and official. . .that the Vikings are making as the new league year gets underway.
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