It seems unlikely that Carson Wentz re-signed with the Vikings to be the third-string quarterback next season, or that Kyler Murray signed with the Vikings to be the second-string QB.
Curiously, a few weeks ago, during the rookie mini-camp, the Vikings brought in former Cowboys-Ravens QB Cooper Rush for a tryout. Remember, it was Rush who five years ago — subbing for injured Cowboys starter Dak Prescott in a Sunday Night primetime game in Minneapolis — passed for 325 yards and two second-half TDs to lead Dallas to a 20-16 victory.
Depending on training camp performances, if the Vikings were to get a decent offer — say a third-round draft pick — for QB J.J. McCarthy, it wouldn’t be surprising if Minnesota starts the season with Murray, Wentz and perhaps Rush as its top three QBs.
Rush, now a free agent, played for $4 million for the Ravens last season.
—Vikings QB contracts for the coming season: Murray $1.3 million, Wentz $3 million, McCarthy $5.96 million and Max Brosmer $1.1 million for a total of $11.2 million for the most important position in football.
Packers QB Jordan Love will play next season for $36.1 million, nearly the same amount that Murray will collect from the Cardinals after Arizona released him in March.
—Minimum pay for Vikings practice squad players this year will be $13,750 a week, with a maximum of $22,850 a week.
—Murray, 5-feet-10, showed a strong, accurate arm in Vikings minicamp last Thursday. The Vikings last season finished 9-8 with inferior quarterbacking. Murray should be an improvement, so this season the guess is 10-7.
—It’ll be interesting to see whether the Vikings extend right tackle Brian O’Neill, who turns 31 in September. He can become an unrestricted free agent after next season. An extension could cost about $23 million a year, but finding a replacement would be challenging.
The Vikings currently have nearly $13 million in salary cap room.
—Ex-Twin Louis Varland from North St. Paul is 3-1 with a 0.49 ERA and 12 saves for the Blue Jays, and has struck out 48 in 36⅔ innings innings.
Inexplicably traded to Toronto last July, Varland, 28, is pitching for $821,500 this season. After the season, Varland becomes first-time eligible for salary arbitration, which could result in a $3 million deal for 2007 assuming there’s not a labor lockout. Regardless, Varland could get a $500,000 dividend this season through baseball’s pre-arbitration bonus program.
Varland, by the way, is on his way to being named to the American League All-Star team for the July 14 game in Philadelphia. The lone Twins all-star will be outfielder Byron Buxton.
—When the Gophers host St. Thomas in men’s basketball on Nov. 6, the disparity in player payrolls will be nearly $8 million, favoring the Gophers.
Meanwhile, with St. Thomas having some 100,000 alumni in the Twin Cities area, and a runner-up Summit League finish last season under hall of fame coach Johnny Tauer — and Minnesota coming off a rising first season under coach Niko Medved — the game is expected to attract a near-capacity crowd of 14,000.
—The odds of making two holes-in-one in one 18-hole round of golf are 1-67 million. Farmington’s Brian King accomplished the feat last week at Southern Hills _en route_ to a 66.
“I wouldn’t believe it if there weren’t people there to see it; I’m still in shock,” King, 43, a fleet car employee told the Pioneer Press. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of those win-a-car kind of things, because I’d take a couple of Maseratis.”
King’s aces were from 150 yards and 122 yards, both with wedges, and officially were the first of a 38-year playing career. King plays to about a 2-handicap.
—The Wild have a three-year window to be a legitimate contender for a Stanley Cup. But before Minnesota can consider a way to trade for unhappy Red Wings center Dylan Larkin, 29, the team has to extend all-world defenseman Quinn Hughes, 26. That could cost nearly the same as it did to extend 29-year-old forward Kirill Kaprizov, $17 million a season.
Larkin is a good center, but not a great one. A little birdie says he’s motivated to play with Hughes, a teammate on the USA Olympic gold medal team that Wild hockey president Bill Guerin managed last winter.
Acquiring Larkin, who is signed through 2030-31 for $43.5 million, could cost the Wild at least center Joel Eriksson Ek, 29, who is signed for $16 million through 2028-29, plus prospects and draft picks. That would leave the Wild with at least a half-dozen players at near minimum wages.
—Would the Wild dare consider trading Kaprizov to the Devils in order to bring Quinn Hughes’ brother Jack, a star center, to Minnesota?
Analytics, which tell how much a certain job is worth, show that to be an intriguing proposition.
The last three seasons, Kaprizov, 29, has 241 points in 194 games. Jack Hughes, 25, who scored the winning overtime goal for the USA over Canada in the Olympics gold medal victory, the last three seasons has 221 points in 185 games despite lesser support.
There is no chance, however, considering Kaprizov’s contract, that the Devils would trade Jack Hughes for Kaprizov. Hughes is playing for $8 million a season and signed through 2029-30. Kaprizov is signed through 2033-34 for $17 a season.
—The San Antonio NBA team that made it to the Finals this season got its “Spurs” nickname when then-owner Red McCombs, the same guy who once owned the Vikings, favored a naming contest submission because his hometown was Spur, Texas.
—The Twins, criticized by fans for not spending the major league minimum $780,000 last February to sign right-handed corner outfielder Nick Castellanos as a free agent, has been released by the Padres after batting .191 in 39 games.
—Twins superb TV voice Cory Provus, counting Division I football and basketball games, will have worked some 170 games by year’s end. And that’s after cutting back from his previous yearly schedules.
“I need to be a husband and father,” the 47-year-old said.
—Paul Molitor and Tim Tschida headline a Capital Club breakfast June 24 at Mendakota Country Club.
—The St. Paul Winter Carnival got a tremendous boost with the hiring last week of former Twins marketing whiz Patrick Klinger as CEO-President of the city’s Heritage and Festival Foundation, which manages the annual celebration.
—Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards has a new shoe brand on the market at a top price of $130 for a pair.
—Brad Frost, the former Gophers women’s basketball coach, is doing consulting work for expansion Hamilton (Ont.) of the Professional Women’s Hockey League.
—A longtime member of the Dunkers civic group said there never has been a more insightful and entertaining speaker than was Gophers women’s basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit recently in Minneapolis. Her one-year contract extension on Thursday increases her base salary to $1.1 million.
—Condolences to the families of Minneapolis Hockey Hall of Famer Dick Westby, who passed away at 91 this month, and John Marso, a former University of St. Thomas football standout who became an OB-GYN physician and delivered more than 10,000 babies in the Mankato area. He was 98.
—One of Gophers football all-time good guys, Joe Salem, just turned 88 years old. The former 1961 Rose Bowl backup quarterback, then head coach, lives in Sioux Falls, S.D., and is doing fine.
Salem’s wife Sue, a St. Paul Central grad who became a Gophers cheerleader, passed away in January from Alzheimer’s Disease.
After Salem’s Gophers coaching career (1979-83), he managed a liquor business in hometown Sioux Falls for 23 years and has been retired for nearly 20 years.
Current Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck, after his latest contract extension, is paid nearly $8 million a year. Salem, when fired by A.D. Paul Giel in1983, was making $55,000.
“My buyout was $26,000,” Joe said with a laugh. “Nobody in the Big Ten, including Bo Schembechler at Michigan, was making $100,000.”
If he were coaching today with NIL (name, image and likeness) pay for players?
“Would be awful,” Salem said. “(Recruiting), they don’t talk about anything other than ‘how much are you going to pay me?’ ”
Salem had several sons coach football in college, including St. Thomas Academy grad Tim, who is special teams coordinator at Georgia Tech. Brad, who coached at Memphis, has a son, Jeremiah, a fifth-year redshirt QB at Eastern Illinois. There’s a decent chance Jeremiah could start against the Gophers in Minnesota’s opener on Sept. 3 in Minneapolis.
—At Mancini’s Char House to honor Cretin-Derham Hall basketball assistant Tony Yazbek’s induction into the St. Paul Sports Hall of Fame recently was Raiders-Gophers alumnus Daniel Oturo. The 6-10 Oturo, a former Timberwolves draft pick, averaged 14 points and six rebounds last season playing in Tel Aviv, Israel, with a $6 million, three-year tax-free deal. Current plans are for Oturu, 26, to return to Tel Aviv next season.
Meanwhile, Oturo spent $180,000 for a new scoreboard for Cretin-Derham Hall.
—The Twins decline to give numbers but say are they are happy with this season’s TWINS.TV subscription numbers.
### Don’t print that
—Play in the NFL can be violent. Non-contact flag football is increasingly popular. The 2028 Olympics will debut the sport in Los Angeles allowing NFL players to participate.
Due to the NFL’s brutality on the field, is there a chance that someday flag football could replace the NFL as it is now?
“That’s a good question; it might be,” Vikings star wide receiver Justin Jefferson told the Pioneer Press last week. “It might be later on down the line. Right now, it’s just trying to stay off the ground as much as possible.”
—Jerry Koosman is offering via auction his 1969 New York Mets World Series championship ring for nearly $800,000, he told the Pioneer Press on Saturday.
“I don’t know if you knew, but (Mets teammate Tom) Seaver’s ring sold for that much,” said the former Twins 20-game winner who is from Appleton, Minn., but resides in Osceola, Wis.
Seaver’s 1969 World Series ring sold for $854,000 last March.
“I’ve got four grandkids and one World Series ring, so you can’t figure out who to give it to,” Koosman said. “So, I figure I’d sell it and give them each 10 bucks.”
Koosman, 83, laughed.
“I had a lot of (memorabilia) stuff and the kids didn’t want it anymore, so I decided to let the fans go for it,” he said.
—Each of the 54 pro-am foursomes for the 3M Open July 20-26 at the TPC in Blaine have been sold out at an average of $3,000 apiece. Getting a commitment from golf’s No. 1 player, Scott Scheffler, alone is said to be worth about $400,000 in ticket revenue.
—Tennis icon Venus Williams will headline a KPMG women’s leadership summit in conjunction with the major golf championship June 25-28 at Hazeltine National.
—It looks as if Jen Pawol, the first female to umpire a major league baseball game, will work home plate for Sunday afternoon’s Twins-Cardinals game at Target Field.
—Don’t be surprised if Derek Falvey, the ex-Twins baseball president, ends up running the Red Sox, especially if former Twins manager Rocco Baldelli gets the managing job in Boston. Falvey was raised in Lynn, Mass., Baldelli in Woonsocket, R.I.
—The Twins, who postponed a June 6 Royce Lewis jersey giveaway after the slumping infielder had been dispatched to Triple-A St. Paul. With Lewis back in the big leagues, the Twins have scheduled a June 28 game against the Rockies for a Lewis jersey giveaway.
—Despite mild discomfort in a knee, it appears Dodgers phenom Shohei Ohtani, who has been starting every six or seven days, could pitch against the Twins during the June 22-24 series at Target Field. It’s jard to believe Ohtani will turn 32 on July 5.
—The Dodgers will come to Minneapolis with baseball’s top payroll ($422 million). That’s nearly $300 million more than the Twins.
—Word is some Timberwolves courtside regular-season tickets next season will cost more than $2,000 a game.
—Even though he had signed a $224 million contract extension with the Timberwolves four years ago, and spent $4.5 million to buy local wealth management advisor Pete Eckerline’s Orono home, Kicks center Karl-Anthony Towns haggled with the owner over a Muhammad Ali-signed LeRoy Neiman print that hung in the home. The owner wanted $7,000, but after back-and-fourth negotiations, Towns got it for $4,250.
—The Timberwolves are being top-secret about efforts to get a new arena built or remodeled.
—Although the Twins’ payroll ($126 million) ranks No. 24 of baseball’s 30 clubs, the bottom six teams in combined payroll have more victories than the top six teams in combined payroll.
—Ohio State is not on the Gophers’ football schedule next season, and that’s good for the Gophers. The Buckeyes are spending $43.48 million on their 72-player roster, including $2.8 million for QB Julian Sayin and $5 million for wide receiver Jeremiah Smith and $561,600 for running back Bo Jackson, per collegefrontoffice.com.
The Gophers are expected to spend slightly more than $20 million on their roster, with sophomore QB Drake Lindsay, 20, getting nearly $1.5 million for his sophomore season.
—The guess here is that the Gophers finish 8-4 (4-5 in the Big Ten).
—Those were former NFL QBs Jim McMahon, Daunte Culpepper, Sean Salisbury and Tommy Kramer — as well as ex-Vikings Adrian Peterson, Chuck Foreman, Carl Eller, Carl Lee, Ed McDaniel, Robert Tate and ex-Packer Ross Verba — at Kramer’s home in Blaine Thursday evening for a cat rescue charity event.
—Ken Mauer Jr. misses refereeing the NBA Finals.
“That’s what you work for, what you live for,” he told the Pioneer Press last week. “It’s like the World Series of refereeing.”
The last time Mauer, 71, who is from St., Paul, officiated in the playoffs was in 2021. He figures he worked about 20 NBA Finals before losing his job.
“The NBA terminated me after offering me a religious exemption and then denied me my religious freedom,” he said. “That’s being litigated to this day and we’ll be in a courtroom soon.”
Mauer had declined the NBA’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
“Because of my religious beliefs,” he said.
#### Overheard
—Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, a former players association assistant director, on team owners’ recent proposal for a salary cap when the game’s labor agreement ends in December: “I’ll let both sides do their negotiating, but when I played, we learned the salary cap doesn’t benefit the players.”