The Quiet Tank

I get your logic, but with the mid round picks they did have, they spent on a CB and a safety. How do we know that we would have drafted an edge rusher with the hypothetical 4th rounder from moving down? Or are you saying they move down and take an edge rusher at the end of the 1st round?


Osborn has been one of the least productive WRs in the league this year and would be a bad #2 (heck, Powell looks better) and Nailor can't stay healthy. But I do think there were plenty of great options in the middle rounds. Downs or Wilson in the 3rd round have been big hits so far, Nacua has been a Diggs-level 5th round pick. Iosivas only has 2 catches so I don't think he is a guy who would be stepping in and doing well yet.

Addison was the BPA and seems to be the right call, it'd just be nice if they could have addressed the defensive front seven in the 2022 draft and the rest of the 2023 picks.


They're probably convincing themselves they need to take a RB high next year too!

Player development is the Vikings' biggest issue in the last 20 years. Most people overvalue high draft picks when talking about rebuilding. Are they good to have? Sure, but even the highest picks can end up as busts.

If we consider the theory that, "Getting top 10 draft picks is necessary to build championship teams in the NFL", we should think of tests to both disprove and prove it.

Test to Disprove: Can we think of any teams with a large number of recent top 10 picks that nonetheless suck? Yes. The Browns' and Lions' rosters have been full of high picks (until some were waived) for years and sucked. OK, both of them have recent signs of life; but lots of crap teams stick their head up for a mediocre year every decade without becoming consistent contenders. Bears have 5 top 10s (and a QB picked 11th) in the last decade. The Panthers, currently the worst team in the league, has picked in the top 10 the last 4 years.

Test to Prove: Do recent SB champions have multiple top 10 picks in their roster? No. Greatest champions of this era, the Patriots, had a 6th-overall pick (Richard Seymour) in 2001 and a 10th (Jerod Mayo) 8 years later. Good pieces of their team, but not their keys and the two were only on the team together for one season. The Chiefs got Mahomes 10th overall; they still had Eric Fisher (1st overall in 2013) on their roster for their first SB victory, but he was aging and limited by injuries and not a big contributor. Rams had some high draft picks that they acquired from other teams via trade, but none they drafted themselves.

I think we're all stuck with the team-building idea that worked for the 1970s Steelers: suck for a while and pick high every year to get Joe Greene and Terry Bradshaw, then emerge as a perennial champ with those high picks contributing. But even those teams were full of players they DEVELOPED, like John Stallworth and Mike Webster that they got in rounds 4 and 5. The Belichick Pats teams succeeded because they kept turning guys like Wes Welker into great weapons without burning high draft picks to get them.

If the Vikings get a top 10 pick, great. If they use it well, they get ONE key contributor. But we have also had as many top 10 picks (2) as those Patriots and Chiefs teams, and neither Matt Kalil or Anthony Barr turned into a HoF player. Did we develop them to their full potential? I think not. We had mixed results with a lot of our early picks: Xavier Rhodes got better as a pro, Trae Waynes not so much. Our most successful high picks like Dalvin Cook and Justin Jefferson were pretty "NFL ready" when drafted.

But where are the Mike Webster or Wes Welker developments? Sure, Adam Thielen, but those championship teams have half a dozen Thielens and a dozen more players that were better than the Vikings' occasional Ifeadi Odenigbo type of "success". We used to be able to develop 3rd and 4th round picks into good DEs, though none since 2015. And prior to Cam Bynum, we had a decade where being picked by the Vikings in the 4th round was a precursor to working the Arby's drive-through.

Maybe the new staff is better at development. I think it's early to know for sure, but there are some positive signs: Bynum, Metellus, Evans (maybe), all could be starters who are better than their draft position. Fingers crossed.

Draft well, coach well both before and during the game, all are good to do. But winning games and titles consistently requires better talent, and you aren't going to get enough top 10 picks to fill your roster. Our staff has to make players better than when we drafted them. That's it.

you always consider it. It's a question of risk vs. reward and opportunity cost. Kwesi made the right call in this case when he chose not to make the trade... at least so far.

Unless you're a legit SB contender the focus should be on drafting the best players. When average teams focus to much on position you end up with lobster fisted receivers like Troy Williamson.

You can always trade quality players if you overstocked at one position, but good luck recovering value from busts like Williamson.

part of roster building is actually adding good players which we did with Addison. You can always play the draft what if game but the goal is to get good players. Also I don't know why some people think you have to fill every hole in one draft. This was always going to take several years to fix this Roster. Offense minus the qb is basically set and we will have a lot more resources going forward for the Defense

I doubt they'd move him for the late round pick they'd get for him... he's playing good enough that he could be re-signed, and shouldn't be too expensive as he's in his 30s. I see now why Flores wanted him back.