2017 draft thread

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Mothman
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by Mothman »

S197 wrote:To arbitrarily take a tackle because it's round x doesn't make sense to me. The skill simply wasn't there. Every team more or less validated this by the historic lack of line selections
By that logic, if every team had validated that "the skill set simply wasn't there" to justify drafting a tackle, no tackles would have been selected. Instead, 14 or 15 went off the board so clearly, there were tackles teams considered worth drafting.
Two in the first round, none in the first 20 picks. When has that ever happened? Never. 2 tackles in the first 5 picks is more commonplace. This seems to be glossed over by those upset with the draft.
Nobody is glossing over it. There's simply a big difference between a draft class not featuring enough talent at the top of the OT group to justify early first day picks and a draft not featuring any OTs worthy of being selected at all. The Vikings didn't have a first round pick anyway so I doubt any of the fans upset by their choice to pass on the OT position had expectations they would be drafting one in the upper 2/3 of round 1. A weak class at a position doesn't mean there aren't still players worth drafting at that position.
I mean, read the report on a guy like Davenport, he's a really big project. I'd prefer to take positions where there are depth and skill over shallow positions just because.
Davenport was hardly the only tackle available. There were certainly some who could have provided better depth and good developmental upside behind Remmers and Reiff.
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Texas Vike
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by Texas Vike »

S197 wrote:To arbitrarily take a tackle because it's round x doesn't make sense to me.

I haven't seen anyone argue for that, exactly. I wrote that I was hoping to see at least a 3rd rounder go towards the position, but not "arbitrarily" (i.e. without regard for the quality of the prospect). I am no expert in evaluating OL talent, but my sense was that Siragusa or Davenport were quite a bit more promising than Aviante Collins. I've seen Collins play, he never stood out to me.

Most of all, I was hoping to see Rick put into action his great off season "epiphany," which he acquired by doing deep research, that OL prospects chosen higher in the draft have a higher likelihood of success. It seems he went to the mountain, meditated on the topic for months, had his EUREKA! moment and then promptly forgot about it once the draft came and reverted to his old ways like Pavlov's dogs.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by Mothman »

Texas Vike wrote:I agree that they failed to adequately address our dearth of talent at the OT position. I felt fine with what we had done through our first three picks. From there, my satisfaction dipped considerably. Rick's penchant for trading seemed to overwhelm him, like a child amused by simple pleasures, and it resulted in a common gripe I've had for several years: an approach that favors quantity of players to quality. It reeks of a man who doesn't really know how to judge talent, IMO, so he covers up that inability by taking more shots, hoping to get lucky.
Perhaps it speaks to a man a little too enamored with the draft day process and the fun of wheeling and dealing. It may also indicate that he isn't clear enough on which particular players he wants throughout the draft, that he's targeting positions more than individuals as the draft progresses. He has a reputation for preparing thoroughly so I hope that's not the case but I would hope when the Vikes are sitting in the mid-rounds, there would still be multiple players on the board they have identified as good fits for their team, for their specific plans and philosophies. When they pass on the opportunity to select players by repeatedly trading down for more picks later in the draft, it makes me wonder if they've sufficiently identified those specific fits beyond the early rounds.
I think Cook, Eiflein, and Jaleel Johnson will all contribute. I hope Bucky Hodges, and maybe one or two of the rest of the low level picks pan out. I'm unenthused, especially, by the LBs chosen. I really wish we'd have taken some of the OL talent that was available in the third instead of stockpiling low level talent. We also failed to bring in sufficient competition for the K and P positions, IMO. I'll be interested to see if one of the WRs sticks.
We'll see how it all works out. It could be a Vikings draft class full of gold. It's impossible to tell right now but I was feeling increasingly frustrated as the draft moved forward.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by Nunin »

The bigger point of drafting a tackle is to give Clemmings roster spot to the next warm body. Nothing against the kid but he was a D lineman his whole career until his junior year(?) He is not NFL caliber period....much less the first tackle off the bench.
Beavers?... is he? I don't think so.
They signed at least 3 wideouts this draft, counting UDFAs.....and 1 tackle.
The big polish guy was drafted...right?
and the german unicorn guy?
Multiple picks for CP84 who walks for nothing.
robbing peter to pay paul comes to mind all too often...YMMV
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by J. Kapp 11 »

CbusVikesFan wrote: Very brief. :D
So, dede Westbrook was on the board when Johnson was drafted? I guess they thought that Johnson will have more of an impact for the Vikings. I might question that theory.
Johnson was thought to be late first round, early second until the combine, where he stunk up the joint.

On tape and in games, he's really good. Who knows why he was so bad at the combine? Maybe he didn't take his workouts seriously, which is not a good thing.

Hard to tell how he'll pan out. Given that they took him in the fourth, I'm not terribly upset with the choice.
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Mothman
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by Mothman »

Nunin wrote:The bigger point of drafting a tackle is to give Clemmings roster spot to the next warm body. Nothing against the kid but he was a D lineman his whole career until his junior year(?) He is not NFL caliber period....much less the first tackle off the bench.
Beavers?... is he? I don't think so.
They signed at least 3 wideouts this draft, counting UDFAs.....and 1 tackle.
The big polish guy was drafted...right?
and the german unicorn guy?
Multiple picks for CP84 who walks for nothing.
robbing peter to pay paul comes to mind all too often...YMMV

i think you're right on target. Spielman just repeatedly fails to learn from past mistakes.

Here are the Vikings tackles right now:

Riley Reiff
Mike Remmers
Austin Shepherd
T.J. Clemmings
Marquis Lucas
Willie Beavers
Rashad Hill
Reid Fragel
Aviante Collins

It's not an encouraging list.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by J. Kapp 11 »

Mothman wrote: Perhaps it speaks to a man a little too enamored with the draft day process and the fun of wheeling and dealing. It may also indicate that he isn't clear enough on which particular players he wants throughout the draft, that he's targeting positions more than individuals as the draft progresses. He has a reputation for preparing thoroughly so I hope that's not the case but I would hope when the Vikes are sitting in the mid-rounds, there would still be multiple players on the board they have identified as good fits for their team, for their specific plans and philosophies. When they pass on the opportunity to select players by repeatedly trading down for more picks later in the draft, it makes me wonder if they've sufficiently identified those specific fits beyond the early rounds.
We'll see how it all works out. It could be a Vikings draft class full of gold. It's impossible to tell right now but I was feeling increasingly frustrated as the draft moved forward.
Guys, hang on a minute.

Rick Spielman doesn't do this in a vacuum. It's not like Rick is locked in a room with a whiteboard, a coin to flip and a phone. The Vikings have lots of other coaches, scouts, and executives involved with this. If this draft turns out to be a failure for the Vikings, then the blame goes organization-wide, not just to Spielman. Of course, that's even more depressing.

Here's the irony for me. The Vikings turned one third-round pick into four later picks -- but I HATE the actual third-round pick they DID make. In essence, Ben Gedeon is Audie Cole -- a former 7th-round pick who has good instincts against the run but no speed and not strong in coverage. They're the same player, only Gedeon has never played a down in the NFL. What's the point of taking Gedeon in the 3rd? Why not just re-sign Cole?

I love our second-round picks. Cook is a first-round talent who I believe can end up being a Shady McCoy type of player, and Elflein could very well start from Day One. He was the best O-lineman on a very good OSU team.

Late-round picks? There's some value, I guess, especially with Hodges, but we've seen this "he's got so much talent" thing with Vikings tight end picks before, MyCole Pruitt being the latest. Hodges wants to be a legend.
“I want to be great,’’ said Hodges, who had 48 catches last season for 691 yards. “I want to be a legend. I want to be a name that’s remembered forever in the NFL.’’
Link.

Prove it on the field, bud.

I don't hate the pick of Ifeadi Odenigbo. The guy was only a starter for half a season but had 25 career sacks. He's really raw -- only been playing football for six years -- and needs to add strength, but he can get after the QB. Dude made a mockery out of Iowa last year.

Opinions vary on the overall grade. It's about a B for me. Higher if you consider Sam Bradford's value, which is, in my opinion, higher than anybody the Vikings could have taken with a first-round pick. It's all luck, of course, but if you ask me, the Vikings couldn't have picked a better year to not have a first-round pick. YMMV.

EDIT: Crap! Gedeon was taken in the 4th round. Ugh!

Oh well. Still hate the pick.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by Lars »

"Opinions vary on the overall grade. It's about a B for me. Higher if you consider Sam Bradford's value, which is, in my opinion, higher than anybody the Vikings could have taken with a first-round pick. It's all luck, of course, but if you ask me, the Vikings couldn't have picked a better year to not have a first-round pick. YMMV."

I agree.... Given the Vikings didn't have a 1st round pick, it was a pretty good draft. It could have been a lot worse.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by PurpleMustReign »

I am ok with a couple of the picks but to essentially trade into four 7th round picks is completely asinine. It's stupid. You will never win games relying on 7th round picks. Rick clearly has no idea what he is doing come draft day.

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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by vatusay »

I don't get the stockpiling of seventh round picks, passing up on more talent by trading farther and farther down. Reminds me of a fantasy football auction draft when an owner saves up money by not spending on the elite players and trying to get cute. In the end you have a garbage team you over-paid for and $60 left of salary.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by S197 »

Mothman wrote:By that logic, if every team had validated that "the skill set simply wasn't there" to justify drafting a tackle, no tackles would have been selected. Instead, 14 or 15 went off the board so clearly, there were tackles teams considered worth drafting.
Reductio ad absurdum. Obviously there are some good tackles in all of college football, that's not the logic nor the point. The point is the depth at the position was shallow. Unless you can show me some GM or scout glowing about the tackles in this draft, I'll let the board argue my point.
Nobody is glossing over it. There's simply a big difference between a draft class not featuring enough talent at the top of the OT group to justify early first day picks and a draft not featuring any OTs worthy of being selected at all. The Vikings didn't have a first round pick anyway so I doubt any of the fans upset by their choice to pass on the OT position had expectations they would be drafting one in the upper 2/3 of round 1. A weak class at a position doesn't mean there aren't still players worth drafting at that position.
Actually you are. Here's Mayocks top 100, a total of six tackles. 6 out of 100 players. That's not lack of talent at the top, that's lack of talent.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300000 ... t-rankings

Davenport was hardly the only tackle available. There were certainly some who could have provided better depth and good developmental upside behind Remmers and Reiff.
Ok, if not Davenport then who? And at what pick?

Maybe we missed a great tackle, I'll be the first to admit I can't evaluate linemen. Clearly you must have someone in mind if you are so adamant.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by S197 »

vatusay wrote:I don't get the stockpiling of seventh round picks, passing up on more talent by trading farther and farther down. Reminds me of a fantasy football auction draft when an owner saves up money by not spending on the elite players and trying to get cute. In the end you have a garbage team you over-paid for and $60 left of salary.
There's a nice article in the draft section Raptorman just posted that has an interesting take.
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by S197 »

Texas Vike wrote:
I haven't seen anyone argue for that, exactly. I wrote that I was hoping to see at least a 3rd rounder go towards the position, but not "arbitrarily" (i.e. without regard for the quality of the prospect). I am no expert in evaluating OL talent, but my sense was that Siragusa or Davenport were quite a bit more promising than Aviante Collins. I've seen Collins play, he never stood out to me.

Most of all, I was hoping to see Rick put into action his great off season "epiphany," which he acquired by doing deep research, that OL prospects chosen higher in the draft have a higher likelihood of success. It seems he went to the mountain, meditated on the topic for months, had his EUREKA! moment and then promptly forgot about it once the draft came and reverted to his old ways like Pavlov's dogs.
Davenport was graded a 5.35. Collins was graded a 5.42.

http://www.nfl.com/draft/2017/profiles/ ... id=2557963
http://www.nfl.com/draft/2017/profiles/ ... id=2558251

The bottom line says Davenport is a project and will need time. Similar to Collins. Neither seems like they would be ready to contribute this year.

Saragusa grades a little higher but struggles in pass protection.

http://www.nfl.com/draft/2017/profiles/ ... id=2557874

Spielman traded up for a top center. Isidore is a top 100 pick according to PFF. They also shelled out for 2 tackles in free agency as clearly the talent was thin in the draft. Look, I don't think Spielman is perfect but a lot of this does feel arbitrary because the complaints are backed up by very little (in general not specifically you).
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by PacificNorseWest »

Cliff notes on the 21 pages, please. Specifically, where do we stand after the draft? Do we still suck? Is there promise? Should the Wilf's fire Spielman? Please advise...
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Re: 2017 draft thread

Post by 808vikingsfan »

2017 Consensus Big Board: The Consensus Grades Your Draft
By assigning pick value to each rank and subtracting it from the actual value of the picks used to select players, we can create pretty good approximate grades that—while not accounting for positional need or scheme fit—give us a good idea who did the best job of acquiring value.

The biggest problem with this approach is that it hurts those with the number one overall pick, because the most valuable player they can get earns them zero points; all they can do is avoid value loss.
The Vikings are perennial favorites with this method, going all the way back to 2014. They consistently place in the top three of these rankings and place first once again this year. They make almost all of this value with second-round selections, with headliners like Eric Kendricks, Mackensie Alexander and this year, Dalvin Cook.

In this case, the Vikings didn’t only do well because of that second-round pick. Out of 11 draft picks, the Vikings gained value on nine of them, only missing out with Ben Gedeon and Rodney Adams.
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