Boehringer’s Goal This Year? Making the Team…
Joe Johnson
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Now, people that have followed our site for awhile know that I’m a GIGANTIC Moritz Boehringer fan. The story I’ve told more than a preacher talking about the immaculate conception, is that I saw now former Vikings offensive coordinator, Norv Turner, at Buffalo Wild Wings the morning after the Vikings selected Laquon Treadwell in the first round. I asked for a picture with him (For some reason) and the guy holding my phone couldn’t get the camera to work, so I had to stand awkwardly next to Turner for (What felt like) a good two or three minutes. I decided to use that opportunity to tell Turner that he needed to draft Boehringer that night. He chuckled and said: “We’ll see!”
Now, I had a picture of that and was going to share it to help make my point. But I couldn’t find it, so instead here’s a picture of me with Meat Sauce from KFAN and Justin, one of the writers for purplePTSD.com. Anyway, the point was, I liked Boehringer so much that I had the nerve to tell the Vikings offensive coordinator, an NFL Legend, that he HAD to do something about it. The funny thing is? He did!
So, I’ve been rooting for Boehringer ever since. Watching the guy in person, at camp, is amazing. He’s the size of a tight end (A bit skinnier), but he has the speed of a fast wide receiver. I kept mistaking him for Kyle Rudolph when he was waiting for a drill to start, but when he took off, he made the other Vikings receivers look slow. Coming up during the Randy Moss era, like so many of our readers, I’m just a sucker for big, play-making wide receivers! So, whenever there’s news about him I tend to cover it here. That’s the case today…
The Pioneer Press just posted an article about Boehringer. Who the Vikings did end up drafting in the sixth round last season. Boehringer was cut after camp, but did end up on the Vikings practice squad. One would’ve thought, before the draft, that Boehringer would’ve had a good shot at making the 53 man roster this season considering the fact that Cordarrelle Patterson and Charles Johnson (Two of the Vikings “weapons” at the wide receiver position) both left the squad. However, the Vikings took a page out of Matt Millen’s draft playbook and went Wide Receiver crazy in the past month, adding (If my math is correct) six receivers in the past month or so, all of which will end up competing with Boehringer for a roster spot. Teams typically lean towards the new project instead of the old project, so it’s looking like Boehringers time with the Vikings could be over. And he’s aware of it. The thing with Boehringer is that he’s not just your everyday project, at all.
Beyond the leap that all young football players have to acclimate to when coming to the NFL, Boehringer has had to deal with the fact that English is his second language, making his ability to really understand the verbiage in the playbook that much harder. He discusses this in the Pioneer Press article, saying: “A year ago, I had no idea about the playbook.”
Like I alluded to above, Boehringer is acutely aware that there’s no guarantee that he’ll make the team this season, saying: “I wouldn’t be here if [Making the team] wasn’t the goal. I think everything has slowed down for me a bit now. I just feel more comfortable and more confident, and I think it makes a big difference.” Definitely. Despite the speed I mentioned noticing at camp above, you could also see that Boehringer was really thinking too much during his routes, which slowed him down. For him to make the team he’ll have to be a lot more fluid in those routes, and I think that he understand’s that as well. By saying that the game has slowed down, it shows that he’s been able to acclimate to the league and that’s really the only thing holding him back. Which is super exciting.
Speaking of that confidence, Boehringer said (In regards to the new receivers/competition the Vikings added this off-season), “We’ve got a lot receivers and they’re all talented, but I feel like I’m a lot better.” Now, it’s hard to tell if he means he feels he’s a lot better than the other receivers or if he means he’s a lot better than he was last season. Either one would be true, to be honest. Boehringer is nearly peer-less when it comes to his physicality, and because of that I can’t help but be extremely excited about the prospect of him playing. A lot of people I’ve talked to this off-season (Other Vikings writers, for example) have completely written off the 23 year old, putting him in the same category as Brock Lesnar, for example. I still believe that Boehringer will eventually play in the NFL and when he does, he’ll have a break-out first year. Whether or not that’s with the Vikings, is to be determined. I’m not sure that the Vikings have the patience needed to bring a long someone like Boehringer, despite Zimmer’s comments about Boehringer’s abilities last season…
According to an article on NFL.com, Zimmer said:
“(I’m) just kind of watching how he learns, how he moves, from what I saw today, he’s a pretty good athlete. Obviously he’s going to have to learn — the biggest thing for these guys is learning terminology. That’s hard right from the start, but that’s not any different from him or anybody else. I evaluate him the same way and just look at him and watch (his) athletic skills — the way he catches the ball, the way he runs routes.”
Then there’s the pressure that he faced last season (Outside of his coach being irritated by something he had no control over, see below). He literally came out of nowhere, thanks mostly to YouTube, from a football league in Germany that’s sub-Division III in quality to the NFL draft. He couldn’t have ended up on a better team, outside of perhaps the Packers, when it comes to the ethnicity of the fan-base. Because of that, he became such a celebrity that Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer ended up feeling irked by it (The type of comment that I’m sure he regrets this year, after speaking with some of his players about the way he talks about them in the media). Saying:
“I want to kind of end the story, to be honest with you, I want him to be here playing football and not being a celebrity. I’ve given him a hard time already about being on TV shows and stuff like that. It’s football now, and it’s time to work. The feel-good story is over.”
And, we now know that that’s what Boehringer wanted all along. Saying in the Pioneer Press piece… “I’m able to just focus on football.” And who could blame him? One year he’s sitting in Germany, playing American football in front of 200 people, The next year he’s signed to an NFL team with a coach who is angry with him because the media is following him, attempting to read a playbook that would be hard to digest even if you grew up in the United States. So, now that he’s had some time to sort of get away from all the hype and simply focus on football, it should work to his benefit.
Sure, he’s still going to stick out in a group of undrafted free agents during training camp, you may even see people with Boehringer jerseys. But, for now at least, Boehringer has been able to focus on nothing else but getting better at football. And if he does, I still believe that he’ll take the league by storm. Whether it’s at the wide receiver position, or the tight end position (He has added 10 pounds of muscle this off-season). I’m rooting for the guy and can’t wait to see what he can do come the pre-season. I know that he’s still a huge project, but I’ve never seen measurables like the one’s Boehringer has (He honestly has better average physical skills than Calvin Johnson). So, I really do hope that the Vikings brass has the patience to bring Boehringer along, and that they’ll create some plays specifically for him in the offense (Perhaps in the red-zone?). A bubble screen to him from the five-yard line would be nearly unstoppable.
So, if we don’t see much of him this pre-season then we can safely assume that the team has moved on from the project that has been Boehringer. But, considering that he’s now finally being treated like a normal sixth round draft pick, I think he deserves more time to develop. The reward to the low risk that is Boehringer is definitely worth that investment.