Cliff wrote: ↑Thu Oct 22, 2020 12:21 pm
This doesn't seem ridiculous to me.
The 2nd rounder was gone regardless at this point and having him on the team is basically worthless. It was a 1 year contract meaning at the end of the year the Vikings get nothing. They're getting a 3rd instead of nothing. Or am I missing something?
If you look at it from the "spilled milk" perspective, I agree it's not ridiculous. The deal was done. The 2nd rounder that is now looking very valuable was already gone, and this move to ship Ngakoue is just cutting losses. It's hard to fault Spielman if that is all that is considered.
But the bigger issue is, why did he make the initial trade in the first place?
As others noted, Reiff was almost shipped to essentially pay for the Cook extension and to bring in Ngakoue. Spielman felt both of those moves took priority over keeping arguably the best player on the offensive line here. Reiff took the cut and stayed, but that was more because of Reiff and the economic realities of his situation than any astute moves by Spielman. He could easily be gone right now and does anyone want to imagine how the Vikings offense would look if that were the case?
And then there is the overall wisdom of making a trade for a pass rusher and paying what he did in the situation the Vikings were in at the time he made the move. I get it - Spielman and Zimmer realized the early sailing was going to be rough with their young CBs, and one way to compensate for that would be to get a better pass rush. In theory that buys time for the young guys to mature and hopefully get good enough where the compensation is no longer necessary. Spielman might have even believe he'd only need Ngakoue for the year, after which the secondary play would be strong enough that re-signing him wouldn't be a priority.
It's pretty clear at 1-5, though, that plan hasn't worked out and wasn't going to work out. Ngakoue hasn't improved the pass rush sufficiently to make enough of a difference, if he could realistically have been expected to do it at all.
It also seems clear that both Spielman and Zimmer thought they had a winner this year. The moves they made seemed to indicate they thought they could compensate for the obvious weak spots on the team while remaining competitive and basically grind their way out of those weak spots. It hasn't turned out that way.
Shipping Ngakoue is basically waving the white flag and admitting that the original plan isn't going to pan out. Its an indication that both Spielman and Zimmer grossly underestimated the weaknesses on the team and, in the case of Dalvin Cook, were overly optimistic that his injury history was truly behind him.
This is always what happens when poor decisions are made. The hole just gets deeper. To get out of one bad move or bad break, more bad moves are usually made until the hole is so hopelessly deep it's easier to just fill it in and bury whatever is in it and start over. Spielman is like a gambler who has lost all his chips and is borrowing against the house and betting bigger to try to get even. I wonder how much longer it is going to take for the Wilfs to understand that.