New starters and a draft pick will attempt to turn around a miserable trend of the past few seasons at corner.

You woke up this morning craving an absolutely wild stat about the Minnesota Vikings’ cornerbacks, right?

OK, here you go: Over the last two seasons opposing quarterbacks have thrown in the direction of Vikings corners 613 times. They have completed 68% of those passes for 5,201 yards, 36 touchdowns and five interceptions, which equates to a 110.3 passer rating. Last year Aaron Rodgers won MVP with a 111.9 QB rating.

Oddly, the 2020 and 2021 seasons had different reasons for the struggles at corner. In 2020, injuries ruined their chances of performing at a passable level. They had eight different corners give up at least one touchdown. You would win at trivia if you remembered that Mike Hughes and Holton Hill started Week 1 of the 2021 season against Green Bay. You’d get bonus points if you recalled Chris Jones and Kris Boyd being regulars that year.

Last season, the Vikings made bad bets in free agency. They figured veteran Bashaud Breeland could give them league-average level play and instead he finished at the bottom of the NFL in PFF grade and QB rating allowed. Mackensie Alexander, who had played well as a Viking in 2018 and 2019, had a miserable year allowing a 117.4 rating. Mike Zimmer was also slow to play Cam Dantzler, who had the best statistical season (though he allowed two game-losing touchdown passes into his coverage).

This time around the Vikings brought back Patrick Peterson, signed Chandon Sullivan and drafted Andrew Booth Jr. in the second round.

Behind the starters, they picked Akayleb Evans in the fourth round and there will be a battle for depth positions between Harrison Hand, Nate Hairston, Parry Nickerson, Tye Smith and Kris Boyd.

Is this year’s roster good enough to turn around a position group that has turned opposing QBs into MVPs?

There’s a case for and against each of the starting cornerbacks. Last year Peterson’s performance was about the best-case scenario for the Vikings. If you subtract the one miscommunication that PFF pinned on him (and he debated), the future Hall of Famer had only one game in 2021 in which he allowed more than 51 yards in coverage. He gave up two passes over 30 yards all year and was never targeted more than seven times in a single game. Without the Cardinals’ funky 77-yard touchdown, Peterson allowed just two TDs.

All that would suggest that he can still ball.

But any player over the age of 30 is going to have questions about falling off. Peterson’s target numbers were better than his grades from PFF. He was 60th out of 91 in coverage grade and 55th in tackling. One of the reasons his target numbers were low, aside from reading and reacting to routes well, is that opponents went after Breeland and Alexander as the weak links. If the target share goes way up, will Peterson still put on the same performance.

He’s also going to play a new system. For all the faults of Mike Zimmer’s defense over the last two years, Peterson’s play underneath the old ball coach was better than his final years in Arizona. Now he’s playing under Ed Donatell.

“Me and him had a rapport over the years,” Peterson said of Donatell. “I played against him when he was in San Francisco. I played against him when he was with the Bears. We just always kept in contact. Just watching the scheme that he's always been around, it travels very well. No matter where he went, the numbers spoke for themselves. When I saw he was coming back I was like this would be a great opportunity to finally get to play for Coach Ed.”

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Whether Peterson is clicking with the system will take until the start of the season to figure out but his camp performance could give us hints about whether he can still handle a full workload. It’s unlikely but in past years the Vikings have cut veteran players on the cusp of retirement like Terence Newman and Brian Robison.

Dantzler might be the biggest swing player on the Vikings’ defense. He sputtered in camp last year and lost the starting job to Breeland. When he played, Dantzler had the best PFF grade and target QB rating allowed of any of the Vikings’ defensive backs. The asterisk on those numbers is that he graded by PFF below 65 in coverage for five games in a row early in the year. Dantzler’s start to camp could be indicative of whether he’s going to take the job by the horns or start slow again this season.

Sullivan played 826 snaps for the Packers in 2021, including two full games against the Vikings that wouldn’t be remembered for anything in particular. He gave up six passes into his coverage for 56 yards in those games. The former Georgia State defensive back increased his snap count each year with Green Bay before hitting the free agent market and allowed just an 85.7 QB rating on throws into his coverage over 173 career targets. It would almost be impossible for him not to be an upgrade at nickel corner over Alexander, who ranked dead last in the NFL in PFF coverage grade.

The plus for Sullivan is that he has a great deal of experience at a complex position. The more teams face three-receiver sets, the more often the nickel corner is on the field. The more offenses innovate, the more they find ways to challenge that defender. But Sullivan played 665 snaps in the slot last season and 533 in 2020.

“Depending on the formation of the offense and the defensive call, you could be playing on an island, you could be in the box, have a run gap,” Sullivan said. “It’s a lot going on and it’s just a different feel. When you’re a corner, you have the sideline and being able to keep your leverage. When you’re in the slot, a lot of times, guys have a two-way go, so there’s a lot of room in there. It can be a little scary for guys, but I feel like I’ve made the right adjustments.”

Sullivan turns 26 in early August. The Vikings will be looking for him to become their diamond-in-the-rough signing quickly. If he doesn’t, the defense could have a tough time coming together.

Booth Jr. is the wild card of the group. He did not participate in minicamp as he recovered from surgery but is expected to be ready for training camp. How far along he’s going to be health wise at the start is anyone’s guess. Whether he’s going to be ready to push Peterson, Dantzler or even Sullivan is also anybody’s guess. But he has the potential to do so.

Booth Jr. had more interceptions than touchdowns allowed in college and showed tremendous ability to track receivers and make plays on the ball. Reports were that teams had first-round talent grades on the Clemson standout but health concerns dropped him into the second round.

“I did play through injuries and that’s why I just like you kind of like have a chip now,” Booth Jr. said on draft night. “I know what I am and I know what I can bring to the table.”

At full strength, it would be a surprise to see Booth Jr. win a starting job but his progress will point toward the quality of depth the Vikings have and what their future might be at cornerback.

Beyond Booth Jr., the depth gets pretty questionable. Draft pick Akayleb Evans is a project player who will need time to develop. Kris Boyd has struggled when given opportunity for extended playing time. Hand barely saw the field last season on defense after showing some promise in 2020. Hairston has largely been unsuccessful as a depth corner for three different teams (116.1 QB rating allowed into his coverage over 145 career targets). Nickerson and Smith are in-case-of-emergency players.

The Vikings appear to have a bunch of dice rolls at cornerback. If Dantzler carries over his second half of the season and Peterson remains strong for another year and Sullivan jumps right into the mix and Booth Jr. stays healthy and adapts quickly, this can be a very good group — good enough to erase the nightmares of the past two years. If any of those things go wrong, it’s going to be tougher to find leaps and bounds of improvement. And if the corners aren’t vastly better, it will be very difficult for the defense to take a big leap forward, regardless of scheme or ramped-up pass rush.