Looking Back on this Year’s Draft (and Many Others) and What it Means for Rick Spielman’s Legacy
Joe Johnson
|
It’s been a few weeks since the NFL Draft and because I was so busy organizing and participating in the Draft party that we held at Town Hall Brewery, it took a bit longer for the picks to sink in than it otherwise would’ve, despite all my hyperbolic comments on the new purplePTSD/VikingsTerritory Message Board. If you were to believe the different national (or some of the local sites, even) you’d think that the Vikings had a decent to good draft (with a lot of B minuses and up being thrown around in terms of the Vikings draft class). However, something has felt off to me since the draft and that was something that all came together as I was reading a piece from a friend of the site(s) Michael Rand from The Star Tribune much later than it originally was published. In his piece, Titled: Vikings better hope they’re right about draft — and Pro Football Focus is Wrong, Rand expanded on something that I was concerned about and helped me come to a conclusion that has been bouncing around my subconscious for awhile (so much so that I’ve been having reoccurring dreams about Cordarrelle Patterson leading me to that conclusion like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, but instead of saying how late he was he was just smiling… Always smiling). That conclusion may shock you and lead you to immediately hop into the comment section on whichever site you’re reading this on (or hopefully the Message Board that I plugged above and will plug about 10 more times before this article is over), but I ask that you give it some time and actually read the rest of this piece before giving me detailed instructions on how to kill my own self. So that conclusion is this: It’s that maybe, just maybe, Vikings general manager Rick Spielman isn’t the draft genius that we’ve all made him out to be. Maybe he’s actually the exact opposite, in fact (and maybe, just maybe, conclusions should go in the introduction of pieces not at the end!).
Some have applauded the draft and may find this article insane, as the Vikings ended up spending their first pick on a cornerback that should end up helping the Vikings secondary as Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer is a cornerback guru and that pick, Mike Hughes, seems to have all the physical tools needed to help out at that position. You could argue that the pick makes sense as the Vikes needed help at the cornerback position as Terrance Newman is officially going to retire after this upcoming season and Mackenzie Alexander has struggled to acclimate to the NFL. However, Hughes will be the fourth pick this Vikings team has used a first or second round pick on at the position (with three coming in the first round). Look around the defense. Look at all the stars they have that they’ve added mostly through the draft. Then look at the offense. The Vikings have the most expensive quarterback/player in NFL history, a player that they added because this organization is monumentally bad at drafting/developing quarterbacks (so bad in fact that they haven’t had a quarterback play two 16 game seasons in a row since Tarkenton retired in 1978). While all teams make decisions on where to invest their capital, whether it be draft capital or actual capital in terms of money spent in free agency, there seems to be a discrepancy when it comes to which side of the ball has received both high round draft picks and good draft picks.
In terms of the quarterback position, while I am a big fan of the Kirk Cousins signing, the Vikings were forced to bring him aboard because the two first round pick quarterbacks that this team has drafted under Rick Spielman have either failed or had a monumental injury (that was no one’s fault but had the Ponder pick worked there wouldn’t have been a need for Teddy in the first place). But, again, I love the Kirk Cousins move so that’s not really the issue here. It’s really about the positions that most support the quarterback in the wide receivers and offensive line. When it comes to the wide receiver position, one that I’ll hop into more in a minute, but before doing wanted to highlight a trend, that this team has drafted player after player on offense that (with some exceptions) don’t tend to… What’s the words for it? Oh yeah, work out. So how can a GM have such a high “hit” rate (as Pro Football Focus said recently when it crowned Spielman the best GM in the league) on one side of the ball while either completely swinging and missing on offense? Then there’s the offensive line, which I will also delve into in a minute as well, which has been a position that has up until late been completely ignored in the draft to disastrous consequences. Which other GM that is considered an amazing team building ignores what is the most important position group on the team? Or how can this discrepancy even exist in the first place? I think the answer is relatively obvious… Because the great picks on defense have been due to the advice/demand from Mike Zimmer (and others) and that that sometimes means that the Vikings are adding pieces on defense at the expense of the offense, which lowers the sheer amount of picks taken which only makes the misses hurt more when the players that Spielman selects don’t work out (and when it comes to positions like the offensive line and the wide receivers, that happens A LOT).
Now, I know what you’re thinking, again. But players like Harrison Smith and/or Everson Griffen were drafted before they hired Zimmer. Well, it just so happens that the Vikings had another former defensive coordinator in Leslie Frazier as their head coach before Mike Zimmer. You could say I’m nit-picking and that the end matters more than the means, but when the means includes such terrible decisions on offense, it does matter. Take a look at the number of receivers this team has spent high level picks on. From Laquon Treadwell to Cordarrelle Patterson, to Sidney Rice and Percy Harvin, Jarius Wright and Greg Childs. None of those receivers have worked out, just like Rodney Adams and Stacy Coley haven’t. There are a couple I’ve missed, but most of the receivers this team has taken really since Moss left have been from the SEC and have failed, spectacularly. While Spielman wasn’t responsible for Troy Williamson, he did go and draft his former teammate in Sidney Rice who, I’m sure I’ll be told, had a great season in 2009. But you could’ve put a Roomba at receiver that season, which was the best season of Brett Favre’s career (think about that) and it would’ve been a Pro Bowler.
So how do the Vikings have the best wide receiver duo in the NFL? Luck. The only Big Ten receiver that this team has selected since the Moss trade is Stefon Diggs who was a fifth-round pick and wasn’t expected to do what he’s been doing by anyone but me, who called him the steal of the draft that May. The other is Adam Thielen, who came on as an undrafted free agent and over time developed into a receiver with the best catch radius perhaps in team history. They lucked out there (otherwise they wouldn’t have drafted Treadwell, as both Thielen and Diggs were on the roster but even then they didn’t know what they had), where they haven’t lucked out is the offensive line and that’s really the point of this article and what Michael Rand was talking about in his article. The Vikings have basically ignored the line like a depressed me avoiding Facebook after my girlfriend broke up. They got burned by the “sure thing” that was Matt Kalil (just like I got burned by the “sure thing” that was a mail order bride service), who happened to be the highest pick in team history (at four) back in 2012. After that pick, the Vikings didn’t actually pick another offensive lineman before the fourth round until they selected Pat Elflein in the third round last season and Brian O’Neill in the second this year. That four year gap of neglect lead the team to bring in older and/or injury prone players like Jake Long and Andre Smith, while rolling the dice on projects in the fourth round or later to hopefully compensate for the fact that they weren’t picking players you could immediately plug into the line, players like TJ Clemmings and Willie Beavers, the latter of which didn’t even end up making the 53-man roster despite being a fourth-round pick. Yay! Remember what I said about how those misses hurt extra bad?
The Vikings started 2016 season 5-0 despite the fact that their quarterback’s leg and most likely career both exploded during practice in late August. We all know what happened after the Bye week that year, and a lot of people at the time and even now chalk up the way that season ended as really, really, REALLY bad luck. However, I said at the time, basically by screaming into the sky, that it wasn’t bad luck but rather years of neglect that lead the Vikings to having an offensive line full of injury-prone players over the age of 30. When you bring in older guys known for getting injured, they’re most likely going to get injured, luck has nothing to do with it. I felt that the team got that message by bringing in Elflein last year (and adding both Mike Remmers and Riley Reiff in free agency) and thought that because the team was relatively set at most other positions (with some depth needs) and also because they brought in the most expensive player in the history of the league, they’d actually go all-out and bring in offensive lineman after offensive lineman in this years draft (after not grabbing anyone in free agency and losing Joe Berger to retirement). I actually got myself to believe that they’d use at least two of their first three or four picks on lineman, with the first round pick definitely going to the line (a guard, most likely). I had my sights set on Billy Price, who played alongside Elflein at Ohio State and would’ve immediately come in and been able to play day one while also being able to improve the line dramatically day one.
When Cincinnatti ended up taking Price a lot higher than most mocks expected (especially considering the injury he had to his pectoral muscle), I figured the team would either take another guard or trade down from 30 to be able to take more offensive lineman in the second, third and/or fourth. Because the draft was deep at the position, trading down would’ve been the best move as it would’ve allowed for a pick in the early second round while also providing a later pick that could’ve been used to add depth at the defensive line or cornerback spot. When I screamed “BOO!” about the Vikings taking Laquon Treadwell both before, during and after that draft, people asked who else I thought the Vikings should’ve taken (considering it was a crappy draft in terms of what the Vikings needed and where they were slotted). In terms of this most recent draft, I think bringing in someone like Iowa’s James Daniels, a player who like Price could play both center and guard in college and unlike Brian O’Neill can contribute right away (something this team needs) and not in one to three years, would’ve been a great pick. Now, that’s not to say that their first-round pick in Mike Hughes was awful, he could’ve been really high on their board and the best player available by their scouting. He does grade out well and like many players, the Vikings have taken on defense, may have fallen further than he should’ve (thanks to off-the-field issues, mostly).
Cornerback was a position of need, also, despite the fact that most people were surprised that the Vikings ended up taking a corner with their first overall pick. The consensus, as far as I’ve been exposed to it, is that the Vikings were targeting Ohio State offensive lineman Billy Price, but because he ended up being taken 21st overall by the Bengals, the Vikings reverted to the best player available. For a team, especially on defense, that has very limited needs, the best player available approach makes sense, or would, if the Vikings didn’t just actually give the largest contract in the history of the league to a new quarterback, something I’ve mentioned a few times but still can’t get my mind around. The Vikings should’ve at least expected that there’d be a run on offensive lineman before the they were able to pick again in the second round, considering it’s their jobs to know who is picking before them and what their needs were (especially considering so far ahead of their pick most of the other offensive lineman they could’ve taken ended up going), and hedged their bets or realized that the risk was too high to roll the dice and take Hughes while hoping that they’d be able to nab a day-one starter on day-two of the draft. But instead they drafted Hughes and then they ended up taking Brian O’Neill, the 91st ranked prospect (according to Pro Football Focus), who is at best a project and at worst… I’ll just let PFF lay it out (which I nabbed from Rand’s piece, full disclosure):
“O’Neill is a terrific athlete for the position and possesses some of the best mirroring ability in the entire class. His punch and play strength are lacking at the moment though, and it’s concerning how poorly he performed Senior Bowl week. While there, he won only 27 percent of his reps in 1-on-1 practice.”
As the one who has been labeled as the first and loudest proponent of bringing Kirk Cousins to the Vikings, I am aware that he isn’t a perfect player by any stretch of the imagination. While I do believe that he’s a relatively large step up from the quarterbacks that the Vikings have had, really since 2009, he still has some weaknesses. The main one is that he struggles under pressure, especially inside pressure, and tends to throw picks while under that pressure. Considering the fact that the Vikings offensive line gave up pressures on Case Keenum on over half of his dropbacks during the NFC Championship game, and that one of their best (if not the best) offensive lineman that they had in that game and last season in Joe Berger, retired, you would’ve thought that the draft guru Rick Spielman would’ve been aware of the hype surrounding Billy Price, and planned around the possibility that he might not be available at 30, or at least a possibility that didn’t include such a monumental risk like taking their BPA and hoping there were still some day one help on the board by pick two. That awareness could’ve lead to a trade, if not up (the Vikings didn’t have a lot to actually trade) then down, so they would’ve been able to pick up two players in the second round as opposed to one corner/kick returner in the first.
If not that, you think he would’ve realized that there was a run at the position coming just based on the needs of the teams picking before the Vikings. Those runs seem to be a hallmark of Spielman’s draft history, especially when the Vikings really need a player at that position. Think about it. Before Christian Ponder was drafted there was a run at the quarterback position. Before Laquon Treadwell? Another run (that gave the Redskins Josh Doctson, the player that Spielman really wanted). Now we have Brian O’Neill. Do you notice one thing that those players have in common? Outside of the run that lead up the Vikings selecting them? They’re all offensive players. If you actually look at the history of the offensive players that Spielman has drafted… It’s actually pretty rough. Spielman had the highest pick in team history when the Vikings had the fourth overall pick in 2012 and spent in on Matt Kalil, the “sure thing” who decided to lose a bunch of weight (after he did get sick and lost weight) and who also always wanted to play tight end but was forced to play tackle by his dad (but at least the team learned it’s lesson and hasn’t drafted any tackles who were tight ends… Wait a minute… That sounds familiar).
So outside of a couple great-to-potentially great backs in Adrian Peterson and Dalvin Cook and perhaps the best tight end in team history in Kyle Rudolph, this team has a pretty piss poor record under Rick Spielman when it comes to taking offensive players before the fifth-round. Really, outside of Stefon Diggs they have a bad record in-or-after the fifth round as well. They’ve been able to get by thanks to free agency and/or trades and thanks to the fact that those defensive picks have landed at such a high rate that an average offense with that amazing running back at the core has been able to accomplish a lot while also creating an aura around the general manager that implies that he’s some team-building mastermind or draft guru. While a lot of that stems from the years where the Vikings had multiple first round picks and seemed to hit on a lot of those players, a few years removed it’s still a Vikings team that had to pay a record price for a QB and that is betting that it’s offensive line, that right now looks worse on paper than the 2017 offensive line did at this point, stays healthy for all 16 games. Even if they manage to do that or if they manage to move their tackle to guard to improve the entire line by lowering the quality of play at right tackle, I still think that people need to realize that this draft wasn’t a fluke and that perhaps we’ve all been giving credit to the wrong person these past few years. Because should the bad things that always happen to the Vikings end up happening this season and the season falls apart because the line can’t protect Cousins, I think it’d be a travesty if Zimmer takes the blame more so than Spielman, who should know when to tell his defensive minded coach that enough is enough and it’s time to invest on the other side of the ball.