Frazier: Vikings need QB

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Much of the talk, at least not involving the lockout at the NFL owner’s meeting in New Orleans, centered on quarterbacks.

The Philadelphia Eagles are making it clear that when the lockout is over they will be shopping quarterback Kevin Kolb. There have been plenty of questions about whether the Minnesota Vikings would be interested.

Currently, the Vikings only quarterback on the roster is Joe Webb, a sixth-round pick in last year’s draft that was forced into the starting lineup late last season when Brett Favre and Tarvaris Jackson were both injured. Neither is expected back this season.

Vikings coach Leslie Frazier was asked about that his team’s QB situation on Tuesday and seems to prefer the team draft a quarterback and develop him, although did not rule out the team possibly looking to trade for Kolb, Carson Palmer of the Cincinnati Bengals or even Donovan McNabb of the Redskins. Both Palmer and McNabb are under contract with their current teams. Palmer has threatened to retire if he is not traded, while many expect McNabb to be released when a new labor deal is reached after struggling in his first season in Washington, D.C.

“He’s a good young quarterback,” Frazier said of Kolb. “There’s a reason that they had him slated as the No. 1 guy going into training camp [last year] and they made the trade letting Donovan [McNabb] move on. They saw some things in him they really liked, and I respect Andy [Reid] and their staff tremendously. ... So you’d have to consider a guy like Kevin if he becomes available.

“He’ll be part of the conversation, as well if that were to occur. Right now, there is no free agency, there are no trade talks but we’re going to talk internally about a bunch of different scenarios and just talk about players throughout our league.”

Frazier talked extensively about the quarterback position at the breakfast. He made it clear that his desire would be to draft someone and plug him in as the starter.

“Ideally, [the goal] would be to get a young guy that could say, ‘OK, we’re going to ride with this guy. He’s our guy. He’s our [Joe] Flacco, he’s our [Mark] Sanchez, he’s our Matt Ryan,’” Frazier said. “He would step in as our starter. That would be the ideal situation. You know you’re going to go through your lumps early on but in the long term you just know you’ve got the right guy, that’s he’s just going to get better and better and better and we build around him.

“There’s no question that would be the way to go and it’s probably been a while since that’s happened in Minnesota. You’d love to have that in your organization. Chicago has that now with [Jay] Cutler, Green Bay has that now with [Aaron] Rodgers, Detroit has that now with [Matthew] Stafford. We want to join that club. We want people to say, ‘Minnesota has their guy.’”

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