If it's a sickness to watch an entertaining Super Bowl and come away with a main conclusion directly related to the Vikings — who haven't played in a Super Bowl since I was 2 months old — then so be it.
Your scorn is noted. But I'm still fascinated by the links and the questions because the very future of those Vikings is a dilemma represented so well by San Francisco and Kansas City.
First off, the two teams that played Sunday have a strong connection to Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins.
Kansas City had a perfectly good quarterback (Alex Smith) who led them to a 50-26 record as a starting quarterback in parts of seven seasons before the Chiefs A) drafted young, dynamic replacement Patrick Mahomes in 2017 and B) traded Smith to Washington early in the 2018 offseason, cementing that Cousins would leave Washington as a free agent.
Cousins, of course, wound up with the Vikings. But it could have been a much different story had New England not decided to trade Jimmy Garoppolo in the middle of the 2017 season to San Francisco. The 49ers and head coach Kyle Shanahan — Cousins' offensive coordinator when he arrived in Washington — were fully prepared to make a run at Cousins in free agency before that happened. It's not hard at all to imagine that Cousins would have wound up there, if not for the Garoppolo trade.
That's interesting enough (at least to me), but here's where things turn fascinating (at least to me): The Vikings now find themselves at something of a crossroads with Cousins, much like Kansas City was with Smith.
But they're built differently than those Chiefs teams were — more so, in fact, like the 49ers.
With Cousins signed for just one more season, the Vikings could try to identify their version of Mahomes in the 2020 draft in a swing-for-the-fences move ... or the they could rationally look at what San Francisco did with a similar quarterback and similar approach as the Vikings took in 2019 and conclude they are already on the right path.
So I was hoping for some clarity in the Super Bowl. Even if it was just one game, when matched against each other would one approach prove far superior to the other?
Nope. Sure, Kansas City won 31-20 thanks to some serious Mahomes magic. But San Francisco had a double-digit fourth quarter lead. The game was right there for the taking. If the 49ers make one more play on defense when the score is 20-10, they're probably the champs.
So what do you do if you're the Vikings?
Well, it's obvious what approach is the safest: extend Cousins and build around him.
But while searching for a star quarterback in the draft is a huge risk (more on that in a minute), trying to win a Super Bowl without a star quarterback is also a risk.
The past 17 Super Bowl winners are littered with elite quarterbacks such as Tom Brady (five times), Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and now Mahomes.
If you want to win a Super Bowl, and contend for one almost every year, you want a top-three quarterback. That's not Cousins nor Garoppolo, nor is it likely ever to be.
But a team can't just snap its fingers and draft the correct franchise quarterback. It requires skill and luck, neither of which have been in long supply for the Vikings when taking their shots at drafting quarterbacks under Rick Spielman. If they decided to draft a quarterback, they would do quite well to pick someone who is even as good as Cousins, let alone Mahomes.
For example: In looking at QBs drafted in the first three rounds from 2010-16, I found only three out of 36 I would definitely take over Cousins, who himself is an even more rare fourth-round success story: Andrew Luck, Cam Newton and Wilson.
Cousins was Pro Football Focus' No. 6-ranked quarterback this season and he won a playoff game. Do you blow that up? Is good really the enemy of great?
That's probably getting right at the heart of the question. Alas, the Super Bowl was fun, but it was of little help with an answer.
