As I mentioned, I'm not arguing people wanted to draft linemen early, there's no disputing that. What is hindsight is taking what happened, which is an extraordinary event and projecting that it was a known event.fiestavike wrote:
I know for sure that Moth and myself were wanting to address offensive line (and have been for some time). I proposed trading up to grab one of the top tackles but I wasn't a big fan of using our first pick on spriggs or ifedi, who I thought would be a huge reach. Jim, as I recall, was much more favorable to Spriggs and Ifedi and would have been happy using our first on either one.
The 'hindsight' argument is just wrong. There were several of us whose primary concern was OL.
Let me give you an example. Was WR not a primary concern as well? Lets remember we had Diggs and really that was it. Thielen hadn't had his big season yet and Patterson was riding the pine. So was Wright. CJ had one good year of production. Diggs also has a history of staying healthy. Had Diggs gone down wouldn't the pitchforks have come out for relying on a pair of undrafted free agents and a glorified kick returner? Look at this poll, the vast majority of people said Will Fuller would have ruined their night.
http://vikingsmessageboard.com/viewtopi ... w=viewpoll
Anyone want Fuller now? I know I do. Or this one, who do you want in the 1st? Majority picked Doctson.
http://vikingsmessageboard.com/viewtopi ... 12&t=29240
Same with DT. A lot of people talked about Andrew Billings amongst others. Had Linval, Floyd, and Johnson (all have injury history) gone down, the pitchforks come out again.
That's what I mean by hindsight. There's no position on the football field where you can lose 60% of your starters and have the depth to carry on like normal. Again, I'm in the camp the line should have been a bigger focus but lets not forget there's a tradeoff with every pick. You plug the line with x, and you potentially lose a Kendricks, Harrison, Hunter, etc.
I'm not giving Spielman a free pas here, all I'm saying is lets be a little objective. What happened to the Vikings line last year is something no one could have predicted. It could have been mitigated by better management as Jim mentioned, but for all intents and purposes, still a black swan.