2020 OL

I don't know much about double teaming a DT, but I can tell ya this, if we can get better play from the interior OL were gonna have a dominate offense. One of the best in the league.   

Agreed.  Unfortunately continuity seems to be the name of the game on the Oline with the Vikings, and they rarely replace guys midseason.

What is with Cleveland btw, shouldn't a 2nd round pick be starting as a rookie when Elf and Dozier are his biggest competition?

kline had a lot of concussions and remains unsigned. I'm not losing any sleep over not bringing him back

Compton wasn't brought in to be the starter, he was brought in to back up both Easton and Remmers before Easton suffered his neck injury and missed all of '18.  Spielman deserves criticism for legit moves he made like drafting Willie Beavers, Damarcus Love, David Yankey, Austin Shepperd and how many other OL in the fourth-seventh rounds who never played a snap.  Other moves may look bad in retrospect but were hailed as the right move at the time.  Drafting Kalil was widely praised, especially fleecing Cleveland to drop just one spot.  Elflein in the third was considered a good pick, Bradbury in the first round-the consensus #1 C in the draft...
The fact is, since 2017 the Vikings have signed or drafted Riley Reiff, Mike Remmers, Pat Elflein, Brian O'Neill, Tom Compton, Dakota Dozier, Garrett Bradbury, Dru Samia, Oli Udoh, Ezra Cleveland, Blake Brandel...that's just off the top of my head.  The OL has had resources thrown at it.  At some point doesn't it stop being about Spielman and start being about the people coaching the OL like Tony Sparano (RIP), Barrone, and Dennison?

I stand somewhat corrected-Beavers played 11 snaps, Shepard played 27...but all of Yankey's NFL snaps came with Carolina.

Good catch on Yankey.

Ricky has done a poor job building a consistent OL for awhile now. There were some things out of his control, but overall I feel he could've done a few things differently that might've helped the OL. Anyways.....that's old news. I think a lot of our OL problems started 4 years prior.   

Think back to the summer of 2016 when Phil Loadholt (retired..achilles), John Sullivan (released..back injury) and Mike Harris (brain arteriovenous malformation (AVM). In September Matt Kalil out with a hip injury....October Andre Smith out with triceps injury and Jake long out with a torn achilles. That OL tire fire still lingers.......... 

Despite all that crap happening with the OL in 2016 Sparano put together a good starting 5 with Reiff/Easton/Elflein/Berger/Remmers in 2017. That was a decent OL until Easton got injured in week 16 and we were forced to shuffle guys around.  

2018 was a complete disaster with Berger (retired), Sparano (dying of a heart attack) and Easton (neck injury). We were in trouble from the get go without our running coordinator (Sparano) and a new OC (DeFilippo). The only bright spot was drafting our current RT O'Neil.   

In 2019 with the help of Dennison/Kubiak Ricky signed Kline, Dozier and drafted Bradbury, Samia and Oli. The 2019 OL with Reiff/Elflein/Bradbury/Kline/O'Neil wasn't the best, but we ran the ball well compared to the previous year. Elflein was the weak link at LG. He struggled. Bradbury wasn't that much better and was taking his lumps as a rookie C. Reiff, Kline and O'Neil were ok. 

This year I thought there would be a big shake up along our OL. Not the case with Reiff and Elflein looking to be the starters along with O'Neil and Bradbury. So far Dozier looks like our new LG. What happened to Samia? Is that guy hurt or something? I haven't heard a peep about him. He was my front runner to play that RG. Oli? I hear he's looking good out at RT. I wanted to see him get a shot at LG. Oh well, let's see what happens..........  

      

You're being real kind there.



I believe we came to that conclusion awhile back, but then along comes Brian O'Neil and Garrett Bradbury and you have to wonder if Ricky has finally improved on identifying some good O-linemen. We're going to find out shorty if Ricky has turned the corner on this OL business. IMO he hired the right OL coach.