Vikings Draft LSU WR Justin Jefferson/TCU CB Jeff Gladney in First Round
Joe Johnson
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In case some of you are younger, I’d like you post the trailer to the ’90’s masterpiece that is ‘Groundhog’s Day’
Spoiler alert: This movie is about Bill Murray re-living the same day over and over again.
Sometimes I feel like I’m reliving the same Vikings off-season/regular season/post-season, over and over again. At least when it comes to the era of general manager Rick Spielman and head coach Mike Zimmer.
Rick Spielman has had his hand in every Vikings draft since the mid-to-late aughts, and for whatever reason whenever he has to draft a wide receiver in the first round (or two) he goes for receivers from the SEC.
I mean, that’d be okay, I guess, if there was some variation or… You know, success at the position from those picks. But, Spielman has swung and missed on every wide receiver not taken in the fifth-round (or that didn’t pay for parking at his own tryout), as a general manager.
Names like Laquon Treadwell, Cordarrelle Patterson, Percy Harvin, Sidney Rice… Even Troy Williamson was an SEC product (although he predated Spielman’s hiring).
So, surprise, with two picks in the first round (thanks to the trade of Stefon Diggs to Buffalo/whatever team uses a fifth-rounder on him in 2021 after he tires of Josh Allen’s “accuracy”) the Vikings first drafted LSU slot receiver Justin Jefferson.
Read about that here:
The Vikings’ next pick was at 25, which because they are the Vikings they traded to move down to 31. They used that pick on a corner, because everyone knew that they’d do just that. They picked up TCU product Jeff Gladney.
You can read about that here:
Don’t get me wrong.
These were both positions of need. But, trading Diggs for a slot receiver, even one that had the year that Jefferson did (whilst not getting bumped on the line, having an offensive line good enough to give number one overall pick Joe Burrow time, and also having a ton of talent around him elsewhere as he played for the NATIONAL CHAMPION), doesn’t make this team better than they were in 2019.
You could argue that improving upon what Trae Waynes/Mackenzie Alexander/Xavier Rhodes did in 2019 does. However, the issue that this team has always had under Zimmer, especially, but Spielman as well is that they refuse to invest in the offensive line and because of that every promising season they’ve had has ended in embarrassing fashion.
Outside of the missed 27-yarder from Blair Walsh. Although, that line was inherited from Leslie Frazier and this team had a running back in Adrian Peterson that could do no wrong (until, you know, he could).
2016? They started 5-0 going into the Bye and ended the year 3-8 and missed the playoffs because their patchwork line of free agent lineman over the age of 32 who were injury prone, did what offensive lineman in their mid-30’s who are injury prone, do.
2017? Sure, the defense collapsed in that game, but if not for those two first-half turnovers (that were on the offensive line), who knows how that game would’ve gone. The same goes for 2018, and 2019.
The Vikings had the 27th ” best” line against the line in 2019, and they did nothing Thursday night to mitigate that. Instead, they drafted a corner, despite this team showing a better propensity to develop post-first round defensive talent than offensive line talent and they replaced Diggs with yet another one dimensional SEC product at the receiver position.
Let’s hope they trade for Trent Williams, even though he fits the bill of another 30-something injury-prone offensive lineman because at this point I have ZERO faith that the powers that be in Eagan have learned a single lesson from their time helming this team.
This is so Vikings that I literally wrote most of my first article about tonight’s draft an hour before the Vikings picked at 22 (I just had to add names), because I fully expected them to draft a receiver from the SEC, trade down and then take a corner. Because that’s what they do.
Including the first-round picks, this now is a 14 player draft for the Vikings and considering that both Zimmer and Spielman are entering their final year(s) of their contracts with the Vikings, one has to wonder why they’ve been given the keys to start a rebuild that at least half of them won’t be around to develop after 2020.
How do I know that?
Because the team fired George Edwards after the embarrassment that was the 49ers game, because clearly the message was that more of the same wasn’t good enough. They then brought in Dom Capers to help bring a fresh eye to the defense, for the same reason.
Zimmer and Spielman responded by doing MORE OF THE SAME Thursday night.
I can’t explain it any better than that.