Steve mentioned it when 49ers picked Kentwan Balmer Saturday. Sometimes, teams are picking players so their team can win now. Mike Nolan, on the hot seat in San Francisco clearly subscribed to that thinking when drafting Balmer, feeling that a dominant defense this season would get him the wins needed to get over the hump, buying him more time to develop an offense. The Vikings, who traded several picks for NFL sacks leader seem to be of the same opinion. Here’s the problem. They’re wrong.
Instead of noticing the glaring need to develop a passing game of any sort, they tried to fix a problem that, frankly, wasn’t much of a problem in the first place. They had a poor pass defense, statistically, because they had such an elite run defense. Offenses had no choice but to take to the air. They were going against Darren Sharper, one of the top safeties in the league, and Antoine Winfield, one of the best corners, but if you throw it enough, every once in a while, you’re going to complete something downfield. Call it the Brett Favre principle.
So, the Vikings signed Madieu Williams and traded for Jared Allen (who the Pioneer Press accurately if unfortunately compared to Carl Eller), giving up most of their high value picks for Allen. You would think that this would satisfy Brad Childress’s asinine goal of building a defense and completely destroying his offense. I figured that they would draft one of the top receivers still on the board in the second round, or perhaps a quarterback. That’s when the draft got hilarious.
The Vikings gave up their fourth round pick and swapped second rounders with the Eagles in order to jump ahead of divisional foes Chicago and Detroit. Surely, this meant they were going to select a quarterback, since thats what the Bears clearly needed, and the Lions could use a youngster behind John Kitna. Then the Vikings picked another safety, Tyrell Johnson from Arkansas State. Not even the good Arkansas.
The Vikings traded up to get a player that is not going to help their team this year (barring injury) and totally gave up their draft picks. This indicates that, since they have no youth to build on, they think they can win this year. And the final piece, the one they needed to move up to get was a back up safety. Yup. No other problems. A nickelback is the solution to all of their problems.
So, everyone in their right minds thought that the Vikings traded up to get a quarterback, and they didn’t. So that meant the Bears had to, right? Nay. They go for a running back nobody has ever heard of, outside of Tulane University. So, then, the Lions surely were going to — nope, inside linebacker. The analysts all said this was a Matt Millen pick, which means “retarded” to most of us, but to them probably meant inside linebacker. So let’s review. The Vikings traded up to draft a player that was not needed ahead of two teams that were also needing the same thing the Vikings REALLY needed, then those other two teams drafted players at other positions anyways. Then, about 15 picks later, the Packers picked Brian Brohm. Even if Brohm and Aaron Rodgers work out at quarterback, they can trade one down the road. So, yeah, the Packers are probably the only team in the conference that has a front office that prepares for the draft in a way other than sniffing glue. That should give them the conference next year. And several years after that.
(Yes, the Vikings drafted John David Booty in the 5th round, but if anyone believes anything other than that being a lucky break, I commend you for your optimism.)
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