Over a year ago, as the Vikings went through the offseason after coming up one game short of playing in the Super Bowl at U.S. Bank Stadium, a theme emerged: Decisionmakers weren’t going to be lulled into a false sense of security by their 2017 success.
This showed up most obviously in their pursuit of free agent quarterback Kirk Cousins. While the Vikings almost certainly could have retained Case Keenum, the primary QB during their 13-3 season in 2017, they instead spent $84 million guaranteed for three seasons of Cousins.
Sheldon Richardson was added to the defense in another big-money move (albeit for just one season), but the Cousins move was the one most of us rightfully fixated upon in 2018.