Vikings attempt to tank for Caleb Williams could be upended by one big-name player

After winning 11 one-score games last season, a correction was coming this year for the Minnesota Vikings. All five of their games this season have been one-score margins, and they're 1-4.

During their Week 5 loss to the the Kansas City Chiefs, wide receiver Justin Jefferson suffered a hamstring injury that landed him on IR. So he'll miss at least the next four games, and possibly more as he may not be entirely compelled to rush back.

Three of Minnesota's next four games are on the road. Week 6 against the Chicago Bears feels winnable, Week 7 against the San Francisco 49ers feels like a looming prime time blowout on Monday Night Football, then come trips to take on the Green Bay Packers and the Atlanta Falcons.

By the time the Oct. 31 trade deadline comes, after the Packers' game (Jefferson's third game missed), 2-6 is firmly in play for the Vikings. And beating the Bears at Soldier Field is hardly ever easy for them.

So the Vikings could very well become trade deadline sellers, and there are a few players who will be of interest to contenders.

A big-name player could derail any idea the Vikings may have to try to tank

Over their history, the Vikings have occupied an at-times annoying middle ground. Never good enough to win a Super Bowl, or even make a deep playoff run, and never bad enough to get a high draft pick and get a potential long-term franchise quarterback. "Suck for (Andrew) Luck" was firmly in play in 2011, and they couldn't pull it off.

The quarterback who is the subject of "tank for" talk this year is USC's Caleb Williams. The Vikings don't seem to be all the way in that conversation just yet, but they are teetering and being without Jefferson may push them over that edge as more losses likely accumulate.

Kirk Cousins is in the final year of his contract, and it seems unlikely the Vikings will extend him yet again. That has made him a top trade candidate if things went off the rails this year, with the New York Jets an easily proposed destination after they lost Aaron Rodgers.

But the fly in the ointment to the idea of trading Cousins, and thus embracing a punt on the 2023 season, is his no-trade clause. If he doesn't want to go somewhere, he has veto power on a trade.

The easy caveat to that is, "Wouldn't Cousins want to go somewhere he can win this year, and what if that's clearly not the Vikings?" He's going to hit the open market in March anyway, right? The quintessential capitalist quarterback is lined up for one last bite at the contract apple.

Cousins continues to be, to borrow a phrase, "I just work here guy". Not a team leader to the level a quarterback should be, and he's often unwilling to take full ownership of situations. And when things go wrong in said situations (see late in the Chargers game this year), he effectively just shrugs and says he doesn't know what to do.

The Vikings could come to Cousins with the idea of trading him sometime over the next 20 days. But if he doesn't want to leave, he's not going anywhere. Taking that stance would fit right in with the rest of his career in Minnesota, and it'd become the final symbol of it.