In their third year with head coach Kevin O'Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the Minnesota Vikings are preparing for a season without Kirk Cousins as their starting quarterback for the first time since 2017.
Currently, with two first-round picks to work with, many are assuming the Vikings will likely attempt to trade up in this year's NFL Draft to land one of the top 2024 passing prospects.
At least according to his latest mock draft, however, former NFL general manager and current ESPN analyst Mike Tannenbaum thinks Minnesota could potentially use one of their first-round selections from this year's draft to acquire a quarterback who already has a job in the league.
Ex-NFL GM predicts Minnesota Vikings will trade for Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray
After spending the last six offseasons attempting to build a team around Cousins' expensive contract, this year seems as good a time as ever for the Vikings to attempt to take advantage of a young quarterback on a cheap rookie deal.
But Tannenbaum has a different idea for Minnesota.
In a 2024 mock draft that he released on Tuesday, the former New York Jets and Miami Dolphins general manager has the Vikings trading pick No. 11 to the Arizona Cardinals in exchange for quarterback Kyler Murray and pick No. 66 in the third round.
This is the part where we remember that Tannenbaum is probably a former NFL general manager for a reason.
On what planet would a trade like this make any sense at all for Minnesota to complete? Murray is an expensive, injury-prone quarterback who would essentially just bring the Vikings back to a similar situation that they were in with Cousins.
Sure, he's younger than Cousins, and Murray has had some very impressive performances during his five years in the NFL. But his injury history makes him unreliable, and he's about to begin the first year of a five-year contract extension worth $230.5 million.
It would literally make zero sense at all for Minnesota to make a trade for Murray during this year's NFL Draft, and if they did, then O'Connell and Adofo-Mensah would likely be closer to getting fired than to winning a championship.
Everyone knows that the NFL Draft has gotten pretty crazy at times over the years. But at least some of the craziness in the past made a decent amount of sense afterward.
Maybe Tannenbaum was just attempting to have a little fun with his latest mock draft because his prediction about the Vikings acquiring Murray from the Cardinals is something that likely has a less than one percent chance of actually happening.