What better time than the Week 7 bye week to put the full-court press on 2021 Super Bowl Champion and current free-agent wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.?
At 5-1, the Minnesota Vikings find themselves in a unique position to be buyers down the stretch of the regular season. And after less than 24 hours since the San Francisco 49ers sent multiple Day 2 picks and a Day 3 pick to the Carolina Panthers in exchange for All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey, the arms race in the NFC is officially on.
The 49ers were reportedly jockeying for McCaffrey’s services against none other than the “F**k Them Picks” Kings, the Los Angeles Rams. Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch paid a much steeper price for McCaffrey than the Rams did last season for Beckham, but this is exactly the type of move that helps put a contender over the top. Are the Vikings in need of a similar move to keep pace?
While it’s difficult to say that the Kevin O’Connell era has been anything short of a success thus far, the offense he brought over from the Rams has certainly left a lot to be desired.
Although the Vikings are a top-10 passing offense at the moment, the offense as a whole more resembles a middling unit than that of a modern, world-champion type of scheme.
- 14th in points
- 19th in yards
- 10th in passing yards
- 11th in passing touchdowns
- 19th in interceptions
- 23rd in rushing
- 9th in rushing touchdowns
- 21st in yards per carry
It’s quite apparent that this offense needs some additional juice. Justin Jefferson, Dalvin Cook, and Christian Darrisaw are the only three guys who seem to make a weekly impact. Even when Jefferson isn’t putting up gaudy statistics, his ability to force defenses to load up their coverages onto him is supposed to provide winnable matchups for Minnesota’s ancillary receivers like Adam Thielen, K.J. Osborn, and Irv Smith Jr.
At 32 years old, Thielen simply isn’t making the type of impact that Skoldiers have grown accustomed to.
Aside from Minnesota’s game-winning drive against the Detroit Lions in Week 3, Osborn isn’t consistently making defenses pay for keeping their focus on No. 18.
Irv Smith Jr.’s season has been defined by recurring drops and putting the ball on the ground.
Inserting an All-Pro like OBJ into Minnesota’s offense should theoretically help open things up — just like it did for the Rams throughout the postseason last year.
But with essentially the entire National Football League coveting OBJ over the next few weeks, how can the Vikings put together a realistic bid to land him? This type of free-agent courting is equivalent to a five-star high school football player in the final days leading up to National Signing Day. You can rest assured that all interested parties will pull out all the stops in hopes of making a lasting impression on the tantalizing playmaker.
Here’s what we already know that wouldn’t be advantageous for the Vikings as they build their pitch for OBJ:
You’re not going to win him over by mentioning a single peep about Kirk Cousins. When the entire league is at his fingertips, Beckham is already mulling offers from the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs. It would be the height of delusion to think that the Vikings would come out on top if the Vikings decided to get into a Big Stick contest with Kirky.
There’s been a lot of chatter locally about O’Connell’s connection with OBJ from the Rams last season — and for good reason. It’s never a bad thing when your current head coach was second-in-command for Beckham’s Super Bowl Championship from last season. But if the Vikings are leading their pitch with a coaching staff connection, it’ll be a distant second to the connection that OBJ has with Rams head coach Sean McVay.
To beat out the Bills, Chiefs, and Rams, the Vikings would be best inclined to go in a different direction to win the OBJ sweepstakes.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more close-knit fraternity within the NFL than former Louisiana State University players. LSU is clearly still near and dear to OBJ’s heart. Who could forget his hilarious antics after LSU won the national title with Justin Jefferson in 2019?
Jefferson and OBJ go way back. Jefferson’s older brother, Jordan, was a quarterback at LSU and played with OBJ in 2011. Justin reportedly was always around the LSU facility, and Beckham describes the Vikings receiver as “a little bro.”
The LSU lovefest doesn’t stop there. Beckham has spent much of his adult life having “a deep respect for” All-Pro and former LSU corner Patrick Peterson. OBJ even went as far as to say that Peterson was part of the reason why he and Jarvis Landry decided to go to LSU.
You think Minnesota’s LSU ties with OBJ stop there? Beckham played with All-Pro defensive end Danielle Hunter at LSU from 2012 to ’13. The former Tigers spend the off-seasons working out with each other.
So let’s recap.
- The Vikings currently have OBJ’s “little bro” in Jefferson
- Someone that played a critical role in his decision to go to LSU in Peterson
- A former LSU teammate in Hunter
Put aside the fact that all three of Minnesota’s individual connections to OBJ are All-Pros in the NFL. It’s no secret that Beckham has been a lightning rod of controversy and has largely been misunderstood throughout his professional career. For a much-maligned superstar like OBJ, having deeply rooted relationships with these three foundational pieces of Minnesota’s franchise is exactly what differentiates the Vikings from every other team currently pursuing him. And a differentiator that could be used as a serious advantage — considering just how much OBJ cares about his LSU family.
Let’s briefly bring it back to the summer of 2010. Mulling retirement, Brett Favre was greeted by teammates Jared Allen, Ryan Longwell, and Steve Hutchinson when they flew down to the quarterback’s hometown of Hattiesburg, Miss. The mission was successful in that they convinced the eventual Hall of Fame signal caller to return to the Vikings — although the season didn’t go exactly according to plan.
(P.S. Favre is still a Hall of Fame scumbag.)
The Vikings can help put themselves in the driver’s seat of the OBJ sweepstakes by executing a similar maneuver. Since the players are on bye this weekend, why not spend a few hours flying to wherever Beckham is at the moment and put in some serious facetime?
To build a more convincing pitch for OBJ than chasing a Super Bowl with either Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen, the Minnesota Vikings will need to go above and beyond. And the easiest way to do that is by playing the LSU card and leaning into the relationships that Beckham has had with Jefferson, Peterson, and Hunter over the past decade-plus.
Would winning a championship with his LSU family mean more than winning one with Mahomes or Allen? It’s a question worth asking Beckham while the Vikings have some free time on their hands over the bye week.
