It was to no one’s surprise that Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O’Connell made it public recently that they intend to bring in a veteran quarterback to compete with third-year QB J.J. McCarthy for the starting job next season.
That veteran, whoever it is, is expected to be the starter, not McCarthy.
The reason Daniel Jones signed with the Colts last year rather than re-sign with the Vikings was that he figured he had a better chance of winning the starting job in Indianapolis than he did in beating out McCarthy. Next time, though, McCarthy will have to beat out his competitor, not be handed the starting job.
— Who will the competition be? Ex-Viking Kirk Cousins remains a strong possibility, but he wouldn’t come to be the backup.
The only other option that makes sense is Kyler Murray. The Vikings could aim higher, but teams aren’t going to trade Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson or Justin Herbert. At the least, the Vikings couldn’t afford them.
— It’s a good bet the Vikings already have discussed with Justin Jefferson their quarterback plans for next season: Someone who can get him the ball.
— There are some technicalities involved in the way Cousins’ contract is structured, but basically the Falcons have to wait until March 12, the first day of free agency, to cut the 37-year-old. That’s probably going to happen, despite the fact that his former Vikings offensive coordinator, Kevin Stefanski, is the new head coach in Atlanta.
It could cost the Vikings between $15 million and $20 million to sign Cousins, who knows O’Connell’s offense, to a one-year deal. Cousins, by the way, sold his $1.25 million Inver Grove Heights home nearly two years ago.
— Regarding Murray: If the Cardinals keep the 28-year-old on their roster by mid-March, $20 million of his $27 million contract becomes guaranteed. If Arizona releases Murray, the Cardinals would owe him $36 million next season.
But an interested team could get him for the veteran minimum of $1.2 million as a free agent.
— Aaron Rodgers and the Vikings? He had a level of professionalism this season, but at 42 doesn’t have nearly the physical talents he once had; no longer can he get away from the pass rush, and while playing for the Steelers this season, he was constantly trying to get rid of the ball right away so he wouldn’t get hit. Rodgers can’t be ruled out, but it would be hard to imagine he’d be the Vikings’ first choice after being overlooked last year. Rodgers’ Hall of Fame career probably is over.
— What makes Indiana’s national football championship even more amazing is the fact that the Hoosiers won all 16 games apparently without cheating. That’s really hard to do, even now despite NCAA revenue sharing and Name, Image and Likeness (NIL).
It’s a decent bet that Indiana didn’t have as much NCAA revenue sharing and NIL money as the Gophers. The Hoosiers’ quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza who is expected to be the NFL’s No. 1 overall pick in April, was only a two-star recruit out of high school in Miami.
Twenty-two Indiana players transferred from James Madison University in Virginia. Is there now hope for the Gophers? Minnesota’s problem is that it doesn’t have Hoosiers coach Curt (“I win. Google me.”) Cignetti.
— Indiana’s Big Ten football championship this season was its first since tying with the Gophers and Purdue for the title in 1967.
“We beat the heck out of Indiana, 33-7 that season,” said Jim Brunzell, a freshman on that Murray Warmath-coached Gophers team.
Sadly, the Gophers’ prototype quarterback that season, Curt Wilson, died recently.
— Last season, Kyle Tucker, 29, hit .266 with 22 home runs and 73 RBIs for the Cubs and received a $240 million, four-year free agent deal from the Dodgers. Simley High grad Michael Busch, 28, last season hit .261 with 34 homers and 90 RBIs for the Cubs, but he’s not a free agent and two years away from MLB salary arbitration.
— Hall of Fame pitcher Bert Blyleven will spend three weeks in spring training with the Twins in Fort Myers, Fla., beginning Feb. 12. He’ll suggest a move for starter Bailey Ober’s slider.
“He’s over on the first base side of the pitching rubber,” Blyleven told the Pioneer Press last week. “If he moved over to the third base side — 12 to 18 inches over — his slider’s going to be more attractive to the hitter rather than missing down and away.
“To me, pitching’s always geometry, planes and angles. Over the years, you talk to great hitters, what’s the hardest pitch to hit? It’s a good fastball down and away with something on it. And if you’re over on the first base side (of the rubber), visualize it to a right-handed hitter down and away — it’s straight.
“But what if we move over 18 inches; now that ball’s coming at the hitter down and away at an angle.”
Planes and angles certainly help, but what would also help Ober is a Bert Blyleven curveball, considered the best in baseball history.
“You know what, if I were on the first base side, I could not visualize where I was starting my curve ball,” Blyleven added. “Everybody has their different philosophies, but it’s the art of pitching rather than throwing.”
— Wishing the best for Twins 1987 World Series closer Jeff Reardon, 70, who recently underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery.
— It looks like ex-Twins infielder Jorge Polanco could be moving to first base for the Mets with his new $40 million, two-year contract.
— Minneapolis’ Dave Podas, 62, the recently retired head golf professional after 23 years at the opulent Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles, is recovering from a home roof fall in Edina that shattered his right elbow. Podus, who is vice chairman of the PGA of America Rules Committee, also teaches at Braemar in Edina.
Frankie Capan, the North Oaks native, birdied the first two holes of his start at the American Express PGA Tour tournament on Thursday in La Quinta, Calif., but finished the round at one-over-par.
— Ex-1991 World Series Twins DH-outfielder Chili Davis, 65, these days is retired and playing golf in Arizona.
— New GM and chief operating officer at St. Paul’s storied Town and Country Club is Bridget Eckert.
— Roger Godin, the superb longtime recently retired Wild curator, on Saturday was to receive the State of Hockey Legacy Award.
— St. John’s of Collegeville, Minn. hit a home run last week by eliminating the interim tag and making Dan O’Brien its permanent athletics director.
— The Gophers men’s hockey team celebrates the 50-year anniversary of its Herb Brooks-coached 1976 NCAA championship team March 6 at Mariucci Arena.
— Ex-Gophers goaltender Jack LaFontaine of the American Hockey League Coachella Valley Firebirds kicked out 27 shots against the Abbotsford Canucks the other day for a second career shutout.
— A true-life national award-winning story by California sports writer Judd Spicer, a St. Thomas Academy grad, on Tracy Drake’s rise from a homeless youth to Division I golfer and Academic All-American has been made into a full-length documentary by Los Angeles production company Hybrid, LLC.
— St. Paul civic leader Pat Harris is getting rave reviews for his book, “A Season on the Drink,” an emotionally-moving, true story based on the St. Anthony Residence Softball Club.
— Karl-Anthony Towns’ official Minnesota connection has ended with the recent sale of his Medina mansion for $4.75 million. The ex-Timberwolf, now with the Knicks, was asking $6.5 million. Towns bought the home in 2020 for $4.52 million.
— Recent passings: Yvette Haskins, wife of ex-Gophers men’s basketball coach Clem; longtime retired Vikings ticket manager Harry Randolph; Carolyn Reichow, wife of longtime retired Vikings player personnel director and former St. Thomas Academy-Gophers pitcher Jerry Thomas.
Don’t print that
— An educated guess is that the Gophers offered to-be junior Koi Perich from Esko $1 million not to enter the transfer portal for next season. That’s a lot considering the market for a defensive back. It’s also a good guess that Oregon’s offer, which Perich accepted, was substantially more.
— A little birdie says Peter Knutson, the Southwest Minnesota State star safety from Sartell who is transferring to the Gophers with two years eligibility left, received a $70,000 NIL stipend with full tuition from Minnesota. He had better offers from other programs, including Iowa State.
— Ex-Vikings QB Sam Darnold is one victory away from the Super Bowl, which Vikings owners Zygi and Mark Wilf have coveted for 20 years. He became one of just two QBs in NFL history to win 14 games in back-to-back years with two different teams, Minnesota and Seattle. The other? Tom Brady with New England and Tampa Bay.
— It will be interesting, considering Jordan Addison’s off-field transgressions, whether the Vikings feel they can rely on him enough to extend the wide receiver’s rookie contract. The Vikings aren’t expected to cut Addison, who turns 24 on Tuesday, but an extension is questionable. Remember Koren Robinson, the oft-troubled wideout the Vikings cut in 2006?
— By announcing that the Vikings intend to bring in a quarterback to compete with J.J. McCarthy next season, they essentially admitted they messed up last season by not bringing in a reliable QB.
— McCarthy was the only NFL quarterback this season to receive a taunting penalty, in the season finale against the Packers.
— Several Vikings, T.J. Hockenson, Aaron Jones and Javon Hargrave among them, will have to take big pay cuts or be cut outright.
— It’s unlikely that center Ryan Kelly, 32, who had three separate concussions this season, will return to the Vikings. Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if in the second- or third-round of April’s draft the Vikings choose 6-foot-5, 300-pound Ohio State center Carson Hinzman from Spring Valley, Wis.
— There’s whispering that a potential arena site for the Timberwolves and Lynx is the former printing plant of the Star Tribune, owned by Glen Taylor. It’s a big footprint with good access to the freeway in a vibrant part of Minneapolis. Taylor told the Pioneer Press last week his company is hiring brokers seeking potential developers.
“We would be open to anyone,” Taylor said.
Of the Timberwolves’ significant ticket price increases under new owners Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore, Taylor said, “There are so many ‘ifs.’ If they win the championship, they’ll probably be OK. But if we settle at where we are now, seventh or eighth place, and we get beat out before we get much further, there are a lot of people who are going to be hesitant to renew.
“Then they’ve got to worry about whether they keep their players or don’t keep their players.”
— Minnesota prefers a remodel of Williams Arena to a new arena because the school is geographically landlocked.
— The Vikings certainly will expect left tackle Christian Darrisaw to play more next season, and will look for insurance at that position in April’s draft.
— The Vikings, including returning players, signed 15 free agents last year. At nearly $50 million now over the salary cap, they won’t sign nearly as many this year.
— Some upper deck tickets with a face value of $100 for the Vikings’ season finale against the Packers in Minneapolis on Jan. 4 were selling for $20.
— Lane Kiffin, the Bloomington Jefferson grad, gets a $500,000 bonus for Ole Miss’ football playoff victory over Georgia even though he didn’t coach the game because he first left for the LSU job.
— By being traded from the no-playoff Vikings to the one-playoff game Steelers, wideout Adam Thielen collects a $53,500 bonus. Thielen, now retired, was the oldest receiver (35) in the NFL this season. He’s expected to join Aaron Rodgers in the annual celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in July.
— One private suburban Minneapolis golf club recently notified members that it is planning a greens-and-irrigation project with an assessment of nearly $35,000 per member.
— One Gophers coach said his program’s recruiting approach no longer emphasizes high school players over transfer portal players because there’s no longer time in college to develop players. Winning needs to come now, not later.
— Class guy: A Tony Oliva fan mailed a baseball to the Bloomington home of the Twins Hall of Famer, asking that he sign it and return it, and included $10 dollars for the effort. Tony, 87, returned the ball signed and the $10.
— Although interest in the Twins has waned since last season, it did not during the Twins’ recent fantasy camp in Fort Myers, Fla. There were 130 campers who paid more than $5,000 apiece to participate.
— The San Antonio Spurs are playing well, but there’s little doubt that the head coach in waiting is former Cretin-Derham Hall and University of St. Thomas guard Sean Sweeney, 41, recently named associate head coach.
— Kendall Blue, the former East Ridge and University of St. Thomas basketball star who received a $400,000 NIL deal from Nebraska for his senior season, is averaging 0.6 points and 4.3 minutes in 12 games for the No. 7 Cornhuskers, who won their 20th straight game against the Gophers on Saturday. For the Tommies last season, Blue started all 34 games and averaged 12.3 points.
— Mark Stodghill fondly remembers getting his first beer. The Rosemount High graduate was 17 and bat boy for the 1965 Minnesota Twins. Billy Martin was the Twins’ third base coach and in the off-season worked in promotions for Grain Belt beer. Billy gave Stodghill, now 77 and retired in Duluth, a six-pack of Grain Belt and, with a wink, told him the beers were for his parents.
Overheard
Terry Kunze, the astute Minnesota basketball icon, on Gophers first-year men’s coach Niko Medved: “I think he’s a great coach. No. 1, he has no players. I mean, they’re players, but they’re not really players. And he’s playing everybody tough. He’s got a tremendous offense — everybody’s moving. For what he’s got this season, he’s done a helluva job. I think he’s a winner and that he’ll get it done.”
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