We'd hate to hold Leslie Frazier completely at his word for sentences in March about a football season that (hopefully) will start in September, but we found this quote pretty telling: "Ideally, [the goal] would be to get a young guy that [we] could say, 'OK, we're going to ride with this guy. He's our [Joe] Flacco, he's our [Mark] Sanchez, he's our Matt Ryan,'" Frazier said. "He would step in as our starter. That would be the ideal situation. You know you're going to go through your lumps early on, but in the long term, you just know you've got the right guy. That's he's just going to get better and better and better and we build around him. There's no question that would be the way to go and it's probably been a while since that's happened in Minnesota."

Sure, Frazier is saying having a rookie QB come in and start right away is the ideal situation. But that also makes it, for the moment, the front-running situation. Frazier is basically saying that if the Vikings can draft the guy they want, they are willing to put him out there right away to learn and develop on the job.

And yes, it has been a while since the Vikings did that. Sure, they've given young QBs some chances. But Joe Kapp (1967) and Fran Tarkenton (1961) are the only bona fide rookies we can find who the Vikings rolled with as their main man in a season. (Daunte Culpepper, you'll recall, was a rookie in 1999 and didn't take over until 2000. Likewise, Brad Johnson was the primary starter in 2006, when Tarvaris Jackson was a rookie).

It could be a sign that Frazier has confidence in his long-term plan. It could be a sign that the Vikings don't feel like they have any better options. It could be both.

Regardless, seeing a rookie QB start for the Vikings in 2011 would be a rare and interesting thing.