Spielman's OL Philosophy Needs to Change

MINNESOTA VIKINGS’ INTERIOR OFFENSIVE LINE
Unfortunately for Minnesota, this is not a new issue. The collective pass-blocking grade for the Vikings’ interior offensive line ranked second-worst in 2018, behind only the Arizona Cardinals. The unit jumped to third-worst the following year before putting up a 34.2 grade in 2020 that fell short of any team in the past three years combined.

Plays like the one below with quick pressure up the middle were all too common for Minnesota.



With the release of Riley Reiff at left tackle, there’s now a chance that Ezra Cleveland could kick outside to left tackle if the Vikings don’t add another player at the spot. That only further weakens the interior. Garrett Bradbury, Kyle Hinton, Dru Samia, Dakota Dozier and Mason Cole would make up the interior depth if Cleveland does move to tackle. That’s not a group the Vikings should feel very confident about.

PITTSBURGH STEELERS’ OFFENSIVE TACKLES
While some may point to Pittsburgh's interior offensive line as a concern for the team, I’m more worried about the tackle position. Alejandro Villanueva has not been the most popular Steeler in Pittsburgh over the past several seasons, but he would be by far the safest tackle option on the team should he return. Villanueva graded out at 77.0 or higher in pass protection in each of his past five seasons as a starter.

For comparison, Chukwuma Okorafor earned a 62.5 pass-blocking grade and a 57.4 overall grade in his first season as a starter in 2020. Some combination of Okorafor, Zach Banner, Jarron Jones and Joe Haeg at tackle requires a lot of projection and could get ugly. The Steelers decided to bring Banner back after a knee injury ended his 2020 season just 59 snaps in, but the former USC Trojan has played just 85 snaps at tackle in four NFL seasons. At best, it’s an unproven unit.

CINCINNATI BENGALS’ INTERIOR OFFENSIVE LINE
Penei Sewell has been linked to Cincinnati at the top of the first round for the better part of a year. However, the Bengals are actually better off at the tackle position than they are at guard as things stand. Left tackle Jonah Williams was the team’s highest-graded offensive lineman in 2020 (70.1 overall grade) in his first season of action. Cincinnati also went out and added former Vikings and Lions tackle Riley Reiff, who has graded out at 71.0 or higher in each of the past three seasons. That duo should form a capable starting tandem if healthy in 2021.

It’s harder to say the same at guard. Here is the full list of Bengals who played at least 100 snaps at guard in 2020, and their PFF grade in those snaps.

PFF grades for Bengals’ guards | 2020 season


Player  Snaps at guard    Grade at guard
Michael Jordan 731 55.7
Quinton Spain 478 55.4
Alex Redmond 448 61.5
Xavier Su’a-Filo 293 59.1
Fred Johnson 124 43.6

Almost all of those grades were boosted by run-blocking performance, as well. The only guard to clear a 50.0 pass-blocking grade was Su’a-Filo in his limited action. His return should help, but really that’s just an indictment on the current group more than anything. Su’a-Filo hasn’t played 500 or more offensive snaps since 2017 and has just one season in his seven-year career with a PFF grade above 65.0 (67.4 in 2016).

This doesn’t mean Sewell should be off the Bengals’ board. Reiff isn’t a long-term answer at tackle, and Sewell’s addition would just force one of Cincinnati’s three tackles to kick inside. However it gets done, it’s a position that needs addressing with Joe Burrow returning from injury.

We’ll look at those criteria to narrow down the list of offensive linemen in The Athletic’s Dane Brugler’s top 100 list of draft prospects and see which ones might be the best fit for the Vikings.

There are a few offensive linemen who have not registered workouts either because their pro days have not occurred yet at the time of publishing or because they couldn’t work out. Tackle Penei Sewell’s pro day with Oregon is on April 2. None of the Ohio State linemen, like Wyatt Davis or Josh Myers, put together full workouts. Virginia Tech’s Christian Darrisaw underwent core surgery near his school’s pro day, and Clemson’s Jackson Carman is going through rehab from an injury sustained this season, though he is planning to have a private workout in April. Alabama’s Landon Dickerson is still in rehab as a result of his midseason ACL injury, though he did photobomb Mac Jones’ interview with some impressive backflips.

Generally speaking, it would be difficult to imagine the Vikings passing on Darrisaw as a result of not having data, though with Darrisaw they may slightly prefer similarly rated tackles who they can verify have passed their presumed thresholds. It also seems virtually impossible that any workout numbers would encourage the Vikings not to draft Sewell if he’s there at the 14th pick.

These thresholds may operate as knockout factors — numbers that eliminate a player from their board — but they more likely operate as small boosts in a player’s grade on top of the traditional scouting grade. That would express itself in drafting many more players who meet these benchmarks despite it being only a small part of the evaluation. After all, the draft is a winner-take-all affair; if one team has a slightly higher grade on a player than another, they are going to take that player higher.

Rashawn Slater, OT/OG, Northwestern (Brugler rank: 11)
We don’t know if the Vikings see Slater as a guard or a tackle, but he has been discussed in draft circles as a contender to play either position. (Given the fact that Ezra Cleveland was discussed exclusively as a tackle by draft analysts but played guard for the Vikings, there may not be too much meaningful discussion to be had here.) He put together the best performance any tackle could manage against Chase Young in 2019 (Slater opted out of the 2020 season), has remarkable on-field athleticism, plays with a lot of intelligence and has quick hands. He doesn’t, though, have the size or length to convince every team he should play tackle and has some power issues when going up against bull rushers. For the most part, he sounds exactly like the kind of player the Vikings have picked over the past several years, though he has more technical skill and a better track record of college success.

Alijah Vera-Tucker, OT/OG, USC (Brugler rank: 13)
Vera-Tucker played tackle his last year at USC and could be thought of as a player capable of both tackle and guard, but like Slater, he doesn’t have the height and arm length of a traditional tackle. He played well at tackle for the Trojans, but his movement profile does fit an NFL guard a bit better, making his switch back to the interior more likely than Slater’s. Footspeed is typically the way tackles are expected to make up for a lack of length, and his average on-field work there points to more work at guard. He met the Vikings’ athletic standards at both positions and should be a system fit regardless, but he will likely see his best years in the NFL on the inside.

Teven Jenkins, OT, Oklahoma State (Brugler rank: 20)
The first thing anyone learns about Jenkins when watching him play is how ruthless he is to opposing defensive linemen. Perhaps the meanest finisher in the class, any team will instantly add an edge to their offensive-line room by adding Jenkins, with Brugler remarking that Jenkins sends defenders “into tomorrow.” He also happens to be a very good athlete, and, at first, it seems like a typo that he’s listed at 320 pounds (and weighed in at his pro day at 317) and looks like a good addition in any scheme. Like a lot of athletes at the position, he relies more on his physical prowess than technical skill and can get caught out — though he didn’t allow a sack in his final two college seasons. His good balance and recovery speed allowed him to get away with things that he’ll have to clean up in the NFL.

Samuel Cosmi, OT, Texas (Brugler rank: 32)
Cosmi is one of the best-testing athletes to go through the pro-day process — even after adjusting for some of the overperformance we see in that environment. At 314 pounds, he ran an absurd 4.87-second 40-yard dash, benched 225 pounds 36 times, broad jumped 117 inches and ran a short shuttle of 4.39 seconds and a 7.35-second three-cone. Compared to the last five years of combine data, that ranks second among offensive linemen in the 40-yard dash, fourth in the bench press, second in the broad jump, first in the short shuttle and second in the three-cone. From a pure performance perspective, he was one of the highest-graded tackles from PFF over the 2020 season and allowed one of the lowest pressure rates in the country — especially when looking at “true pass sets,” which only look at the plays that demand NFL-style plays from the linemen. He has technique to fix for his game to fully translate into the NFL, has some leverage issues and could anchor better, but that kind of athleticism can get one drafted in the first round.

Liam Eichenberg, OT, Notre Dame (Brugler rank: 48)
A technician when it comes to his lower body and true NFL pass sets, Eichenberg has significant work to do when it comes to fixing his upper-body technique. This allows him to get to the right spot on time and get underneath the pads of defensive linemen, but it leaves him hanging when it comes to some of the favorite pass-rush moves of well-coached defenders. His movement is good, and he’s surprisingly strong for his size, but he needs to work on his hands in a big way. The good news is that this is typically a fair bit easier than working on lower-body technique and he seems to have a good bit of that down, unlike Cosmi.

Quinn Meinerz, OC, Wisconsin-Whitewater (Brugler rank: 56)
Unrecruited by Division I programs out of high school, Meinerz moved himself up draft boards throughout his final season for Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater and seemingly hasn’t stopped. With a dominant showing in the Senior Bowl, his first experience against this level of competition, followed by a fantastic pro day that aligns with his athletic skill set, Meinerz showed that he can overpower big nose tackles and demonstrate the quick feet necessary to take on quick three-techniques. His size should allow him to play guard as well as center, though it has hurt his agility a bit. He needs to be more technically consistent, but his natural ability should allow teams to feel comfortable taking him on Day 2.

Brady Christensen, OT, BYU (Brugler rank: 76)
After an eye-popping pro day and a resume that seems hard to top — he finished the year as PFF’s top-graded tackle — it might be difficult to imagine that Christensen looks like a third-rounder to many analysts. But his age is a significant concern. Players who enter the draft older typically don’t do as well as similarly talented counterparts, and they have more limited upside. Not only that, his testing doesn’t always match his tape and he can have problems against faster edge rushers. He did well on zone runs for BYU, so his baseline movement going forward is there, but he still has issues hitting his targets or adjusting his track. That said, he didn’t allow much pressure and was dominant overall as a zone blocker, so he should be on the Vikings’ radar.

Kendrick Green, OC/OG, Illinois (Brugler rank: 87)
Considered both a center and guard prospect by a number of draft analysts, Green has tackle-like athleticism but doesn’t have the length to make an impact there. He has played both interior offensive line positions and has some of the best plays of any player in the class on his film, but he’s a bit of a home-run hitter who can sacrifice technique to win as a finisher and can miss big in both the run and pass game. While he is athletic, he hasn’t shown a ton of recovery speed to make up for these mistakes and can also get lost moving up to the second level. That said, the balance of his play has been quite good, especially in the Vikings’ preferred zone-style scheme, and coaching technical consistency into him might make him into one of the biggest steals of the draft. He has the athletic ability, power and attitude for it. And on top of all that, he was a successful high school wrestler.

Trey Smith, OG, Tennessee (Brugler rank: 93)
Smith is a shockingly good mover for a player over 320 pounds, and he’d likely gain even more movement capability in an NFL program that might ask him to shed some pounds. He’s a powerful player who might be off of some boards because of medical concerns. He has a fantastic instinct for finishing and some good movement into the second level, but he does have some problems moving backward in pass protection, likely limiting him to the inside. He’ll sometimes let players get by too easily, whether that’s because of a missed assignment, because of poor hand placement or because he just takes big swings and misses. He’s an interesting gamble for any team that medically clears him.

Both Alex Leatherwood (OT/OG Alabama, ranked 33rd) and Creed Humphrey (OC Oklahoma, ranked 49th) passed the Vikings’ estimated workout thresholds but don’t show the kind of on-field athleticism they typically covet at the position. Humphrey should present a particularly difficult case for the Vikings, as he has a strong high school wrestling background — something they’ve valued in the past.

James Hudson (OT Cincinnati, ranked 68th) has shown good movement, but his workouts don’t fit what the Vikings typically look for. Aaron Banks (OG Notre Dame, ranked 99th) just barely missed the thresholds, but he was probably off their boards already for issues getting to the second level.

Deonte Brown (OG Alabama, ranked 69th) and Jalen Mayfield (OT/OG Michigan, ranked 47th) missed the thresholds by enough that the Vikings would have to really have loved their film to consider them targets.

Walker Little (OT Stanford, ranked 57th), Dillon Radunz (OT North Dakota State, ranked 74th) and Stone Forsythe (OT Florida, ranked 89th) met the threshold at guard but not tackle or center, but they’re likely tackle-only prospects given their height and leverage issues. Little might be even more difficult to project given his extensive injury history — he has taken fewer than 100 snaps in the last two years.

The good news is that there are a number of players in the draft that look like they fit the Vikings’ needs along the offensive line. Expect them to grab a few of these players later this month.

The Minnesota Vikings have left much of their offensive roster-building to the NFL Draft after a surprisingly busy defense-oriented free agency period. That approach carried some risks with it, and they’ll have to make good on their implicit promise to find other ways to improve the offense in the draft, primarily taking on the consistently beleaguered offensive line.

It has become pretty clear that many expect the Vikings to draft an offensive lineman in the first round: The most common pick mocked to the Vikings in the last week, according to the NFL Mock Draft Database, is USC’s Alijah Vera-Tucker. Offensive linemen were picked 57 percent of the time and edge defenders were picked 36 percent of the time despite the fact that the Vikings didn’t change their edge-rusher situation at all.

Contrast that to the two months preceding free agency, where mock drafts had the Vikings selecting edge rushers with their first pick over 55 percent of the time and offensive linemen under 20 percent of the time.

While there certainly is a great argument for finding players at positions of weakness, the job of an NFL team’s front office is not to fill holes — it’s to get better. A lot of the time, of course, that means filling in those holes — as that might be the quickest way to make the team better. On the other hand, differences in talent and positional value can outweigh positional need when it comes to helping a team, and it could be the case that an edge rusher would put the Vikings over the top in their rehaul of the defense.

The Vikings didn’t have a great offensive line last year, and the offense was still plenty good. Perhaps the franchise could double down on that idea, make the defense even better and trust the elite group of offensive skill players to pull that unit forward once more.

If the draft falls the right way, however, they might be able to have it both ways.

To see if the Vikings can upgrade their pass rush while still dramatically improving their offensive line, we can simulate a few trades using The Draft Network’s mock draft simulator.

General managers often tell the media that they don’t pay attention to mock drafts, but the secret is that even if they don’t read our mock drafts, they conduct hundreds (if not thousands) of their own. They’ll even bring this up from time to time, including Vikings GM Rick Spielman, who mentioned in 2013 that they must have run “8,000 scenarios” without a single one seeing Sharrif Floyd fall to No. 23 in the first round.

Spielman’s attention to detail and diligence in pursuing as many draft scenarios as possible is a big reason why he has been so successful at maneuvering in the draft. While his specific selections don’t always pan out, he has done an excellent job figuring out how and where to trade to maximize value. Spielman has often traded down just enough while still getting a key target — like with Matt Kalil, Anthony Barr, Dalvin Cook, Alexander Mattison or, most impressively, Danielle Hunter — and has occasionally traded up with as little cost as possible to acquire a coveted player falling a bit too far, like with Harrison Smith, Cordarrelle Patterson and Teddy Bridgewater.

Spielman has developed a good feel for the draft and has done well at figuring out where runs at particular positions will be or if a player he covets will still be available, all while acquiring back-end assets that can help fill out a special-teams unit or provide critical depth.

That skill can be put to the test again if the Vikings really want to roll the dice. We can see if there are scenarios in which Minnesota fans might feel comfortable ignoring their most obvious need to acquire talent elsewhere.

The specific players aren’t incredibly important except in one case — the second-round offensive lineman. In most of the runs, almost all of the edge rushers available at 14 were available at 22. If you wanted Kwity Paye, Jayson Oweh, Gregory Rousseau or Azeez Ojulari instead of Phillips at 22, you’d have a good chance of grabbing them. For the most part, it seems like trading down to grab an edge rusher is a winning move.

In the third round, Meinerz was usually available but not always. Spencer Brown was typically there at 78 as were Trey Smith and Ben Cleveland. If you want to construct your ideal mock draft swapping those players in and out, go ahead. The issue is whether or not you’ll be happy with the quality dropoff that comes from choosing your offensive linemen from the pool available in the third round.

Those rounds aren’t the issue for this exercise; the reason that both mocks with second-round picks selected Christensen is that almost all of the second-round offensive linemen are players who don’t fit what the Vikings typically look for. Instead, the second round seems to be full of players who played well in their college systems but likely can’t perform the plays the Vikings ask of their offensive linemen in their wide-zone running scheme.

This isn’t unique to the TDN simulation; Brugler’s top 100 has eight offensive linemen in his top 33, six of whom fit the Vikings’ criteria. From ranks 34 to 75, there are 10 offensive linemen, but only two are known to fit with the Vikings based on the criteria we’ve been using. It’s possible to fudge the qualifiers — Creed Humphrey’s workout numbers fit, even if his film doesn’t — or assume that Josh Myers and Wyatt Davis are fits without having pro-day workouts to rely on, but we’re still taking some risks waiting on linemen.

This isn’t too dissimilar to what happened in the 2018 draft. With a big need along the offensive line, the Vikings chose to select cornerback Mike Hughes, knowing that there were quite a few qualifying linemen in the second round. The problem was that those players started going quickly at the top of the second round, with Austin Corbett headed to the Browns at 33, Braden Smith to the Colts at 37, James Daniels to the Bears at 39 and Connor Williams to the Cowboys at 50. They were essentially forced into — luckily for them — Brian O’Neill at 62.

The next lineman off the board that year, Brandon Parker to the Raiders at 65, wasn’t much of a fit. Neither were the next few off the board: Geron Christian to Washington at 74, Martinas Rankin to Houston at 80 and Orlando Brown to the Ravens at 83. It’s not until pick 89 — Joseph Noteboom to the Rams — did we get to another prototypical athlete. In these mocks, I was just as lucky as the Vikings were with O’Neill, as it would have only taken one team to expose the Vikings’ gamble with Hughes.

Complicating the second-round picture is the question of Meinerz, who was selected in the third round in these mocks but may actually be a viable second-round prospect. Meinerz is one of the biggest questions in the draft. Beat writers are far apart on where he is going to be drafted, and though Brugler has him at 56, TDN has him 75th on its predictive board, which is identical to his average draft position, per Grinding the Mocks’ aggregated mock-draft database. Some boards, like PFF and ESPN, have Meinerz around where Brugler does at 53rd and 54th respectively. He ranks as high as 44th on Daniel Jeremiah’s big board at NFL.com and as low as 82nd on DraftTek’s board.

If he’s considered a viable pick in the second round instead of a third-rounder, then it may be easier to roll the dice on ignoring the position early on.

One other way to emphasize the conundrum is by using the horizontal board provided by Grinding the Mocks that separates players by round. The players highlighted in green are ideal “Vikings fits” while the players highlighted in yellow didn’t produce enough data in testing or on the field to be able to tell.



Only two show up as possible second-round fits, though it should be noted that this set does not seem to consider Brady Christensen (ranked 61st by the Draft Network’s predictive board, 76th by Brugler, 87th by PFF, 147th by Drafttek and 235th by ESPN) as a viable prospect for the first three rounds, so I even had to cheat a little to find a system fit.

It’s both a deep offensive line draft and one full of athletes fit to run Minnesota’s system. That knowledge might tempt people to think that the Vikings would be better off targeting a top-heavy position in this year’s draft, like edge rusher, which is certainly a position of need.

That’s a pretty justifiable approach, but the problem is that a deep draft full of athletes is not necessarily deep with athletes who fit for the Vikings on the offensive line. That doesn’t mean Minnesota would be wrong to go defense first in this year’s draft. Certainly, it would make a lot of fans upset and add to an interesting recent pattern that carries a lot of risk. But if they choose to take that gamble, they’d either have to be incredibly sure that the player they really want for the offensive line will fall as far as possible or confident in their ability to trade back up to get the player they need.

Can the Vikings improve the offensive line after ignoring the position in the first round? It seems like there are a bunch of scenarios where that’s possible. But it does look like a pretty big risk. If Spielman really wants to treat the draft like he’s trading stock options, this could be one of the bigger challenges he has set for himself.

If the Minnesota Vikings do not draft a quarterback in the first round, chances are very high that they will be asking their top pick in 2021 to be an instant impact player.

The runaway favorites for the Vikings with the 14th overall pick (or wherever they trade down) in the mock draft world right now are offensive linemen and defensive ends.

Those two positions so happen to also be the most difficult for players to succeed in Year 1, according to a Pro Football Focus study.

We’ll start with the O-line.

The estimated offensive line with no more free agent additions would look like this: Rashod Hill — Mason Cole — Garrett Bradbury — Ezra Cleveland — Brian O’Neill

There’s a bunch of different combinations they could toy with but Mike Zimmer said on his pre-draft press conference that Cleveland is a right guard at the moment.

So the assumption is that whichever offensive lineman they pick with No. 14 would compete with Hill in training camp for the starting left tackle position. Whether they could bump inside to guard depends on the player. Northwestern’s Rashawn Slater, for example, is expected to be able to play inside if needed. Same with USC’s Alijah Vera-Tucker. Top Virginia Tech tackle Christian Darrisaw might only project as a tackle. That makes it more likely he’d get the LT job Day 1.

The learning curve is steep for all three offensive line positions, according to research from PFF’s data guru Timo Riske:



(Side note: The huge jump from Year 2 to Year 3 could be something to watch with Garrett Bradbury.)

Here’s the distribution of 32 starting rookie offensive linemen over the last three years by PFF grade:

Above 80 (Pro Bowl level) — 9%

Between 65-79 (solid starter) — 28%

Between 50-64 (below average starter) - 28%

Below 50 (below replacement level) - 34%

At least based on recent history, the odds are higher that the Vikings would receive below average play than solid-starter level and there’s only a small chance that they land the next Quinten Nelson.

Would it still be an upgrade? Possibly. Over the last three years, the Vikings’ guards have graded 61.1 (Remmers), 62.2 (Compton), 64.7 (Elflein), 61.5 (Kline), 66.2 (Cleveland) and 44.6 (Dozier). Those all fall into the most-likely-scenario range for a rookie.

That doesn’t mean the Vikings should avoid drafting an offensive lineman. Until the line performs better than ranking 29th in pass blocking, they should continue to invest in better blocking. It’s only to say that it’s not a sure thing the rookie could contribute right away. They do have contingency plans in Hill and Cole. How good those contingency plans are is questionable.