Good Draft - but the Net Effect...

The free agent game isn't something that should be relied on as much as it appears the Vikes are planning on doing. Sure, its simple to say "we'll just sign free agents to fill the holes" but the flaw with that is these players are ones that their team chose not to resign for some reason. That reason is either performance based or cost based. So we would either be adding someone else's underperforming castoffs or having to outbid 31 other teams for the ones that left due to cost reasons. Sure its great to fill a couple key spots but we have many more holes than that. There has been a pattern of sharply increased cost for IOL lately too, a great position to use those 2nd & 3rd round picks on if we had them.

Well said. Another way to look at it: are we losing our own players to reduce our salary spending just to spend it on other teams' players?

That has been necessary to some degree because Spielman held onto aging players too long. Other than Smith, that's over, right? Now the key is that KAM must retain our own good players - JJ and Darrisaw without any question.

Other than some great luck tomorrow with late picks, this team can only improve significantly by developing current players. That happened last year with Metellus and Bynum. Who else? Sadly, even those improvements were Spielman draftees. Who is around from the 2 KAM drafts that might emerge? Hopefully Ty Chandler, but beyond that we have Jaquelin Roy, Jay Ward...are we still holding out hope for Booth or Cine or Evans?

Well for starters we 100% got younger and cheaper, theres no losing that battle. Now comes the important question of production, I for one will take the gamble on McCarthy and Turner over Kirk and Hunter at this point in there careers as well. Will Turner reach Hunters level? Thats obviously a very difficult question ill probably say no if I had to guess. But I will take the prospect of JJ and KOC guiding him 10/10 times over Kirk. Im very happy with these two picks and the state of the Vikings.

Did I miss something? I took some time off, but last I heard we had 2 once KJ and Wonnum signed.  Who did KAM sign?

I think next year is going to be a one-off. If you look at his first two draft from a trade perspective, they were, mostly, trade downs. Now, there are a couple different factors for that--they needed bodies, and they didn't have a lot of cap space to work with, to bring in free agents.

This off-season, they had cap space, but they also needed to get a QB, which they assumed was going to cost them some draft capital, so they used some of it to get an additional first round pick. They used a little of it to get to 10 to ensure they got a QB they wanted and didn't have to settle for.

Then they had an opportunity to get, arguably, the best defensive player in this draft class in Dallas Turner, and honestly, I'd rather they get a high round pick with a higher chance of success than opposed to keeping a third round pick with a lower chance of hitting. I mean we all remember that stellar 2021 draft class Rick Spielman had with four third round picks and three of them were gone in year two.

So yeah, they don't have but a few picks next year, but they can address their needs short term in free agency. You can't do it every year, but when you look at the reasons why this year, I am more than fine with it.

Last year Hunter had 80 pressures and 18 PFF sacks. The top rookie pass rusher, Will Anderson, had 59 pressures and 7 PFF sacks. Looking back at some elite prospects' rookie seasons:
Player/Pressures/Sacks
Hutchinson/53/11
N Bosa/80/10
J Bosa/59/13
M Garret/37/7 (9.5 games)

Bosa is the closest I have seen to what Hunter did and he didn't have near the sacks. So yeah, Turner is going to take at least a year to get to where Hunter was in 2023, if he ever gets there.

It doesn't get much better for rookie QBs, who generally struggle in their first years, but the past couple of seasons Brock Purdy (in a small sample size) and CJ Stroud arguably played better than Kirk ever did for the Vikings. We have to also remember that for most of the season we started Dobbs, Hall and Mullens. It can also be easier for a rookie QB than a vet to have offensive success even if his numbers aren't great, since with a vet teams know how to scheme against him. So even if JJ has some bad games here and there as he learns how to play in the NFL, our offensive production could go up. Which wouldn't be that difficult with how bad the offense was last year and since even with Cousins it was very average.

However, it isn't all about what these two are going to do themselves. It is what those two plus the 3 starters the Vikings were able to sign on defense because they weren't paying out insane money to two players. Hunter was the only pass rusher last season and now we have 3 guys who should be better than our 2nd best pass rusher in 2023. On top of that, we improved significantly at ILB and possibly even in the secondary.

Offensively we no longer have the worst running back room in the NFL, and will be better at QB than we were for most of the season last year, possibly all of it.

With JJ hopefully being healthy all year and Addison becoming better in his second season, I see this team winning more games than the 7 they won last season. How many more will depend on how the QB plays.

Improved, not a lot. I would say it's actually worse overall. Zimmer liked to keep veterans forever. Not a great idea, but KAM can't even find people worth keeping. A couple picks in one draft is not enough to sustain a successful team.

The talent is worse than it ever was under Zimmer. I think KAM is trying to run the Vikings like the Rams where he makes a few picks every draft and tries to use free agency to supplement that. I think that's a really bad idea. You're gonna end up overpaying for those free agents and while yes some of them are pretty good, a lot of them are not so great and will still cost above rookie contract pay.

The talent level isn't really improving. Offensively it's about the same and defensively it's getting worse, a lot worse. They still don't have any corners that would start on another team. They still lack one legit starter at DT. They did fix the DE questions which is a good start. Our linebackers still aren't great and certainly not better than Zimmer era. Safety is meh, not significantly better or worse. Smith probably shouldn't be starting anymore.

We gave up too many picks for Turner. The McCarthy thing is still dumb as f*ck but I ranted about that the other day and I'm not gonna do it again here. I think they should have stayed at 23 and taken Terrion Arnold. Yeah we would miss out on Turner but they at least have one starter at DE. They have nobody and I mean nobody worthwhile at corner.