Joint practices between the Vikings and Broncos — leading up to their preseason game on Saturday — were yet another occasion to look back on Teddy Bridgewater's time in Minnesota and wonder what might have been.
Careers of Kirk Cousins, Teddy Bridgewater are forever linked
It's hard not to think about how things might be different — for better or worse — if not for that fateful day nearly five years ago.
August 12, 2021 at 8:03PM
Even Bridgewater, in a battle for Denver's starting QB job with Drew Lock, said Wednesday that his injury nearly five years ago weighs on his mind.
"I've found myself thinking more about that day lately than I have in the past," Bridgewater said of the fateful practice in which a non-contact injury had catastrophic results. "I use it as motivation. Before, I used to brush it off and keep going. Now, it's like, man, here I am, where I could have been counted out, and I almost had to get my leg amputated."
It's not always helpful to relitigate the past, but I did it anyway on Thursday's Daily Delivery podcast — thinking about Bridgewater's injury in the context of not only his career but the Vikings' QB path that followed.
All of these things can be objectively true at the same time:
*Had Bridgewater stayed healthy, at least through 2018 and the end of his rookie contract plus fifth-year option, he would have provided the Vikings with a unique and valuable commodity: a capable QB at a low cost. Paired with a defense that was in its prime, and with plenty of money to spend to bolster other areas, the Vikings might have done more than win one playoff game (in their lone playoff appearance) during the span between 2016 and 2018.
*Had he stayed healthy, there's almost no chance the Vikings would have signed Kirk Cousins. Bridgewater's fifth-year option season would have been 2018, when Cousins was a free agent.
*There is no guarantee Bridgewater would have been the Vikings' long-term answer at QB beyond 2018. He had pedestrian numbers as a second-year QB in 2015, even as the Vikings went 11-5 and won the NFC North. He was trending upward before the injury, but it's hard to say how far he would have gone.
*Cousins is objectively a better quarterback than Bridgewater, and it's not his fault that he makes a lot of money. But he might not be a better fit on the Vikings than a healthy Bridgewater would have been all these years.
*Bridgewater remains enough of a fan favorite, while Cousins remains polarizing enough, that a Twitter follower recently asked me, "Is their a chance on Saturday that the Vikings crowd cheers for Teddy and that the boo birds are out for Kirk?"
The swirl of it all is one big what-if, and the realization that Bridgewater and Cousins are forever linked — for better or worse.
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