August 2011 update: Vikings sign McNabb! First part of my predictions has come true. The rest are sure to follow!

In 1961, a twenty-one-year-old Fran Tarkenton took the field for the Minnesota Vikings as their starting QB. He immediately started scrambling around the backfield, thrilling Vikings fans…until 1966. After that season, due to conflicts with Coach Norm Van Brocklin, Tarkenton was traded to the New York Giants, beginning a 45 year quest to try and figure out how to replace him. [Inexplicably, Tarkenton was traded after Van Brocklin was fired and replaced by Bud Grant. Huh?]

Initially, things went well. Joe Kapp took over for the 1967 season and performed quite admirably, culminating with a Super Bowl appearance after the 1969 season. After the losing effort in the Super Bowl, the Vikings decided that hey didn’t want Kapp back,. Over the next two seasons, they turned to Gary Cuozzo, who played adequately in leading the Vikings to two playoff appearances.

Knowing that the team had one of the all-time great defenses, team management knew they needed to get a QB that could lead them deeper into the playoffs and hopefully to the Super Bowl on a consistent basis. This is where the Vikings apparently developed the "Let’s Replace Fran With a Proven, Veteran, Experienced (Read Aging) QB" strategy that they would follow, for the most part, into the twenty-first century. In their first effort to replace Tark with a proven, yet aging QB, they traded for…Fran Tarkenton. Tarkenton led the team exceptionally well for the next seven seasons, getting to the NFC Championship Game four times, and the Super Bowl three times (and it would have been 5 and 4 if the refs had called Drew Pearson’s push-off!). During that span, Tarkenton went from age 32 to age 38.

Upon Tark’s retirement after the 1978 season, the Vikings tried again to replace him with a younger QB. Rather than realizing that their strategy to replace the QB who held almost every NFL passing record with a proven, aging, veteran signal-caller, the Vikings went back to the fool’s quest of trying to find a young, up-and-coming QB. For the next fourteen years, the Viks experienced a franchise low in wins in 1984 (3 wins and the S-word (Steckel)), and lost a conference final (1987 – Darin Nelson drops a pass at the goal line in Washington). For the most part, they were, mediocre.

In 1993, Head Coach Dennis Green must have been reading his team history, when he decided to go back to the strategy that had worked so well in the early 1970’s. Enter Super Bowl winner and 34-year-old Jim McMahon. The resumption of the "Let’s Replace Fran With a Proven, Veteran, Experienced (Read Aging) QB" strategy was back in place and has pretty much remained in place since that point (excluding the six year Daunte Culpepper reign and the Tarvaris Jackson experiment). Here’s a list of the "older" Vikings QB’s since 1993 with ages at the start of the season:

1993 – Jim McMahon – 34

1994 – Warren Moon – 37

1995 – Warren Moon – 38

1996 - Warren Moon – 39

1997 – Randall Cunningham – 34

1998 – Randall Cunningham – 35

1999 – Randall Cunningham – 36

2005 – Brad Johnson – 37

2006 – Brad Johnson – 38

2007 – Kelly Holcomb – 34

2008 – Gus Frerotte – 37

2009 - Brett Favre – 40

2010 – Brett Favre – 41

There’s been a lot of Donovan McNabb chatter associated with the Vikings the last few days, so I offer up the first of my predictions. Based on past behavior, and the inability of the Vikings to find a competent, sustainable, young option at QB, I predict that the Vikings QB for the next two seasons will be…

2011 – Donovan McNabb – 34

2012 – Donovan McNabb – 35

And now, I give to you the starting QB’s for the rest of the 20-teens and into the (toothless?) roaring 2020’s:

2013 & 2014

Kerry Colins (ages 41 & 42) – If the older the better is the strategy, let’s go all out! Jeff George wore out his welcome in the 90’s, and George Blanda and Steve DeBerg are doing activities in the rest home, so why not Kerry Collins? Assuming he won’t still be starting in Tennessee.

2015 & 2016

Michael Vick (ages 35 & 36…which now seems pretty young)

Former mobile Eagle QB’s seem to be a preference (Cunningham & presumably McNabb), so Vick will wear the horns in 2015 & 2016.

2017

Peyton Manning (age 41)

Once again, the holder of every NFL passing record will retire a Minnesota Viking (previously Fran Tarkenton and Brett Favre). This is a direct shot at Packer fans as that’s about the only shot I can take at them. That is, until you realize that the aged QB strategy finally works and Collins, Vick and McNabb lead the Vikings to 5 consecutive Super Bowl wins (wake me up when this is over!).

2018

Tom Brady (age 41)

If Peyton can do it at 41, why not Brady?

2019

Jay Cutler (age 36)

Cutler not only brings a refreshing, youthful approach to the Vikings, but brings us back to "fond" memories of the Darth Vader-esque, noodle-armed, former-Bear Jim McMahon slinging passes ten or maybe even fifteen yards downfield.

2020

Matt Ryan (age 35)

Another former Falcon gives it a shot under center for the Viks! Former Falcon? Brett Favre, silly! Favre came in a Falcon, went out a Viking. The rest is a blur.

2021

Mark Sanchez (age 35)

Another former Jet gives it a shot under center for the Viks! Former Jet? Brett Favre, silly! Favre came in a Falcon, had a cup of coffee in New York, and went out a Viking. The rest is a blur.

2022

Drew Brees (age 44)

When Archie Manning played QB for Minnesota in 1983, he was only 34. But he seemed like he was 55, so former-Saint Brees at 44 makes sense here.

2023 & 2024

Aaron Rodgers (ages 40 & 41)

Who else would I end this with? Favre at 40 & 41? Rodgers at 40 & 41? Duh!

There you have it. The bonafide list of signal callers for the Vikings until 2024! It has to work at some point. Doesn’t it?

Unless you're the 2003-2004 Detroit Pistons, you need to have one of the top 4 or 5 players in the league and two or more star players to support them to win an NBA championship. That's been, I believe, a proven fact since Magic and Bird came into the league 30 years ago (which is a topic for a future post).

If you can accept that as fact, then you must also understand that the vast majority of NBA teams and their fans are fooling themselves if they think that they have a chance to win a championship in the coming season. Teams that have a legitimate chance to win it all next year would be Miami, the Lakers, Orlando, possibly Oklahoma City (only because of Kevin Durant), and maybe the aging Spurs or Celtics.

If you're not a fan of one of those teams, then expecting anything more than being a playoff team, being competitive, being fun to watch, or hoping for a chance at the #1 draft pick is simply not being realistic. As a Timberwolves fan, I'm somewhere between hoping for fun to watch and competitive with an outside hope for the playoffs or another high draft pick. At this point, I really don't know what the current team is capable of in 2010-2011, although I know for certain that it's not going to be winning an NBA championship. Do I have hope for a future championship? Yes! Do I know if it will be with the current core of the team? No. But at least I have hope for something other than 15 more wins in 2010-2011.

Which brings me to my point. The national media is eating David Kahn alive! I don't understand why. He's taken a roster that, at most, gave us hope for 25 wins a year and turned it into a team with potential. A team that could become a playoff team on its own merits or a team that has a solid core and needs to somehow add a superstar to get there. Here's a comparison of where we were and where we're at:

2008-2009 T-Wolves

Randy Foye/Bobby Brown/Sebastioan Telfair

Mike Miller/Rashard McCants

Ryan Gomes/Corey Brewer

Al Jefferson/Kevin Love

Craig Smith/Jason Collins

Mark Madsen, Brian Cardinal

2010-2011 T-Wolves

Johnny Flynn/Luke Ridnour/(Ricky Rubio 2011?)

Martell Webster/Corey Brewer/Wayne Ellington

Wesley Johnson/Lazar Hayward

Michael Beasley/Kevin Love

Darko Milicic/Oleksiy Pecherov(Wrong Euro) Nikola Pekovic

Nemanja Bjelica, Paulo Prestes, Ramon Sessions, Kosta Koufas, Ryan Hollins

Championship team? Absolutely not! Potential to build something for the future? Yes! Much more so than the sub-par roster that Kahn inherited. So why is the national media (ESPN especially) so down on Kahn?

When a team trades their cornerstone superstar (KG), it’s obvious that they need to get as much value as possible out of the return trade package. Let’s use the Vikings trade of Randy Moss as a rather negative example.

In 2005, the Vikings traded Moss for Napoleon Harris and the 7th overall selection in the coming NFL draft, which turned out to be…groan…Troy Williamson. Without including Harris’ minimal defensive stats, the Vikings traded away 352 receptions, 5,323 yards and 58 TD’s (including an NFL record 23 TD’s in 2007) for 89 receptions, 1067 yards, 3 receiving TD’s. Obviously a bad trade.

I don’t want to get into the numbers with Garnett’s trade, as the true value of the trade will take a few more years to be evident (and the NBA numbers don’t, I believe, show as clear a picture as NFL numbers do). Instead, let’s take a look at the players that the T-Wolves acquired as a result of trading KG in a 7-1 deal.

First, let’s eliminate the players that have come and gone, didn’t produce much when they were here, and/or didn’t provide any value in terms of draft picks or players when they were released:

1. Sebastian Telfair – became Quentin Richardson, became Mark Blount, who was released.

2. Gerald Green – became Kirk Snyder, who was released.

3. Theo Ratliff – released.

My assumption is that the above three players provided some form of salary cap relief in the previous three years or during this offseason, so we could add some aspect of the free agent additions (Milicic, Pekovic, ???), but that’s hard to quantify so we’ll leave it out of the equation.

4. Ryan Gomes – became Martell Webster.

Now, let’s look at the players still on the roster or whose rights the T-Wolves control:

5. Al Jefferson – cornerstone of the KG trade

4a. Martell Webster – via Ryan Gomes

6. Johnny Flynn – Minnesota’s returned 1st Round pick from Boston

7. Wayne Ellington – Boston’s 2009 1st

As of this post, the trade stands as:

Kevin Garnett                        for          Al Jefferson

                                                            Johnny Flynn

                                                            Martell Webster

                                                            Wayne Ellington

The importance of trading Al Jefferson becomes the difference in saying that you traded the franchise’s best and most beloved player for 2 average NBA starters and 2 bit players or that you traded him for the chance to be a perennial playoff team that has a chance to make a run at the Finals; or essentially to be right where they were as a team with KG.

The difficult piece, as I see it, is that Kahn isn’t going to get more for Jefferson than McHale got for KG. The question then becomes whether or not he can get enough to help the Wolves become a playoff team.