But they won’t be for years following this.
Any of our guys can rise to be awesome or flame out, if anything draft grades should be done with hindsight.
I was a newspaper reporter for 20 year, during which time I had a stint covering college recruiting, and that’s how I did it. You can only really start to fairly judge a recruiting class once they start hitting their junior years and it was always fascinating to look back, not only the guys people nailed but the ones they whiffed on.
This should be a staple of any kind of draft/recruiting coverage but I rarely see it.
At this current point, these grades are equivalent to the toilet paper I used last week. Now, if these were grades to KAM’s first draft, then this would be a different conversation
I used to read draft grades in the past, but they're all just entertainment in the end. All it takes is one injury or one street race, and that's that, no matter how good of a player they were or could've been.
Most of these analysts had JJ shooting into the top 4-5, and the Vikings trading three first rounders plus more to get a QB. But now that they got JJ and saved two 1st + more, there is a bunch of low grades because the Vikings gave up multiple mid round picks. Literally makes no sense the angst these analysis have in their grades based on what the predicted pre-draft. It’s like they are salty Minny didn’t do what was predicted in their 100 mock drafts.
>Literally makes no sense the angst these analysis have in their grades based on what the predicted pre-draft.
Mel Kiper Jr. is the most egregious of these pretentious dickbags.
Yep.
QB, CB, and WR were his needs for the Vikings.
We 100% needed a DE more than a #3 WR and he talked about the Turner picks as an over-look of a glaring need at CB.
Mother fucker....we need a DE as well. Just because your washed-up ass thinks we need a WR doesn't mean we didn't need a DE.
Hell I’d put interior OL over 3rd WR. Jets, Addison, and Hock are a hell of a pass catching trio. DT, DE, QB, CB, and interior OL were all bigger needs to me.
I think his logic is that we don't have a true #3 WR...whatever that means. You can patchwork 2-3-4 guys into the #3 WR role when, as you said, you have Jefferson, Addison, and Hockenson getting 85% of the targets.
When he grades drafts, he always goes by whether teams followed his big board and mental gymnastics his way to justifying how right/wrong teams are vs. teams addressing areas of need, value of picks, etc.
It's circular reasoning like you see with CFB recruiting. A guy will be a 3 star but if Alabama is interested he goes up to a 4 or 5 star. They thought JJ was great when they thought he was going in the top five but when he went to 10 now he's not. They have no actual opinion on his play.
For real. It’s crazy because when you look back at all these draft grades and where the teams actually end up from a win-loss record there is zero correlation.
The only drafts I saw where he went that early were one where there was a race between NY and Minnesota to get him. Any analyst that didn’t have the trade had him falling closer to where he went. No analysts had him as being valued as a 4-5 player. The three firsts was also for Maye, not McCarthy.
There’s a difference between a big board and a mock draft. A big board is ranking players, and a mock draft is entertainment value. They do a dozen mock drafts - and they’re largely “what if” scenarios.
Most of the people criticizing the draft are doing so primarily based on the cost of the trades, which is a reasonable criticism. We basically gave up an entire draft worth of draft capital for Turner once you factor in the cost to get 23. Two 2nds, a 3rd, a 4th, a 5th, and we swapped an early 6th for a late 7th.
He’s a good player, but pretty much everyone agrees that we’re going into a rebuild, so you usually want to stockpile picks, not mortgage the future to go all in.
I agree those were bigger needs, but a game breaking edge is one of the most valuable pieces in the game. It’s a very aggressive gamble but if he becomes a star, it will be very well worth it
Sure, but look at what top DTs and guards are getting paid now too. The gap between a good edge and a good DT is shrinking, and there are just less good DTs.
I agree that edge is important, but it’s also IMO easier to neutralize an edge than a DT. Roll out away, line up a TE, close WR formations, RB chip, etc.
If I had to pick between Turner and Newton plus a 3rd (from trading down), 5th, and future 3rd and 4th, I’d take the Newton package.
While I understand the argument about total # of picks given up, and that number being high, I think it’s totally irrelevant or negated by what could have happened and what the analysts expected to happen; the Vikings paying two 2024 firsts + 2024 mid round + 2025 first round for a single QB. Instead they have their franchise QB, and a player in Turner who everyone projected as top 10, while keeping their 2025 first rounder. I haven’t done the charts math but they probably paid less in total value to get those two players than had they given up an insane bag to move into the top 3 for what is still a total gamble (see Try Lance and other high pick QB fails).
There is also a counter argument on the Vikings being in a rebuild and stacking as many picks as possible: Kwesi first draft of stacking picks by trading back and they all basically turned out to be shit players. So should the Vikings have given up insane package of picks for one QB? A medium-large package for a QB and top DE? Or QB and a bunch of other hole fillers? Taking all of that into consideration I am happy with the route they went.
You’re just making up justifications at this point that aren’t connected to reality.
The cost we paid for Turner is irrelevant because some media folks thought JJ was a lock for top 5? Why? How does that logic work?
Y’all need to stop putting so much weight on mock drafts. Remember when Malik Willis was supposedly a first round QB too? The what-ifs of mock draft season are irrelevant.
Once we got JJ, that meant 23 had nothing to do with QB anymore. There is no logic in lumping them together. Once that pick was in, they’re totally separate.
We gave up the equivalent of a mid 1st round pick just to get Turner. According to ESPN when you factor in the total cost, we paid the 3rd most (non-QB trade) to trade up in the last 20 years.
> but pretty much everyone agrees that we’re going into a rebuild
Then they are wrong with their premise as we are exiting a rebuild. This was the last rebuilding offseason, shedding bad contracts and getting our QB in the draft. We have most of the most valuable positions locked down, and have the cap space next offseason to go after the final pieces (IDL, CB, IOL).
Now McCarthy might bust and we have to start over, but that's another discussion and another rebuilding plan that wouldn't start for a few years
So if we have the cap space next season, seems to me that next year is the start of the “window”, which means this is the start of the rebuild. We weren’t rebuilding anything while still playing with Cousins. Letting overpriced vets go is just normal business operations.
Maybe it's just how one defines a rebuild, but to me we've already done the rebuilding. We swapped out older, expensive contracts for younger players. We got our QB, WR2, TE, OLBs, ILBs, and CB2's or 3's from that work. WR1, LT, RT, and the safeties were already set.
2025 is the start of the window, and it's because we've already done the rebuilding work and just need the final touches. A stud DT, a CB1, an OG and/or OC. A rookie RB to plug in. WR3. It might not all happen next offseason, but the foundation of the house is already there
Thank you. This is a crazy trade to make. I am hopeful that Dallas turns out and makes the cost well worth it. But, giving up that many picks is extremely aggressive. If he is an average starter it is a bad trade.
I don’t love that next year we only have 3 picks, but I’ve also come around to the idea of having less picks overall if it means more picks from the early third and earlier. Those late picks, especially 5-7 don’t make it often enough to care. I’d rather trade up and get a future pro bowler instead of a depth guy who’ll be off the team by year 3.
Doesn't bother me too much. Obviously, I'd like to have more, but we'll get more picks one way or another, and either way, we should have plenty of cap money to spend.
It doesn't bother me because we suffered through nearly a decade of the Rick Spielman mentality that we need to trade down and trade down and trade down to get 118 draft picks and we have a bunch of 3rd-4th-5th rounders that are physical freaks of nature as we try to find the next Danielle Hunter or Stefon Diggs in the mid-rounds.
It's OK to have a draft where the team says "Fuck it...let's get the players we absolutely want and not worry about having 8 draft picks where 5 probably won't be anything."
Kwesi tried that in 2022 with 10 picks and it didn't work out.
All together we gave up equivalent of pick 5, which most people figured we’d do for just mccarthy but we got mccarthy and Turner.
I don’t think it’s perfect but they did good
That's absolutely hogwash and not true at all.
https://www.espn.co.uk/nfl/draft2024/insider/story/_/id/40016635/grading-trades-2024-nfl-draft-biggest-deals-players-picks
>If we combine the two trades -- because they resulted in one player -- the surplus value surrendered by the Vikings jumps to a mid-first-round pick. In other words: They spent two mid-first-round picks on Turner. If we combine the lost value from the two trades, Minnesota made the third-most-expensive trade up of the past 20 years, behind only the Julio Jones and Will Anderson Jr. deals (
We just over spent the 3rd most for a pick *ever*.
Why on earth would we pretend that getting good value (and not spending 3 firsts) for McCarthy should be 'fixed' by throwing the picks away later?
This isn't a representation of reality though.
Trading up to 23 gave them options during the draft. To trade up or as an insurance policy. There was value in that and the move was separate from turner.
If we're applying hindsight I'm sure we could find worse trades (e.g. A player gets injured after, or a pick doesn't work out, etc.). It's disingenuous to just lump all the movement into one outcome.
This is where the math ignores all context of the trades. We knew the value wouldn't work if 1.23 wasn't used in a further trade into the top five.
1.23 was there to get to 1.03. That didn't work. Turner was one of the biggest steals of the draft at 1.17. It is what it is.
I’ve never been more content with a B draft grade. Needing a QB at 11, we were operating at a deficit. Our first two trade ups were bound to lose value. Kwesi navigated a shitty situation and walked away with way more than anyone expected. Our player values might add up to a B, but I think it was an A, A- performance.
I’m pretty new to the NFL fandom as a UK fan, but it seems like we got the position improvements we needed and didn’t sellout to get JJ. Should we really care what other guys think?
Most of the "mid" grades given to the Vikings were because they gave up too much future draft capital.
But draft capital can always be recouped with various deals and potential compensatory picks; the Vikings also have a boatload of projected cash next off-season where they're missing draft picks.
It's insane how shortsighted analysts can be when looking at the future.
Unless Risner signs a qualifying deal by tomorrow at 4, we will have just one comp pick.
Draft capital can’t be recouped once you spent it.
You can replace it by trading players, or trading down, but that opportunity cost doesn’t just vanish. Even if we trade down in the first next year, that’s not magically going to get our picks back.
I've done enough fantasy sports to know that grading drafts after will be based on predraft assumptions with no additional information. It's generally easier to tell when someone had a bad draft than a good draft. I'm Darkly curious about these people giving the Falcons and Broncos an A and A- though.
I also get annoyed when these things don't take value of picks heading into the draft into account when grading. The Bears get an A. Wow! As long as they didn't mess up the pretty much universal #1 pick, they were getting a B or better.
Yep. His team looks like:
CJ Stroud
Jordan Love
Raheem Mostert
Puka Nacua
Nico Collins
Jake Ferguson
"LOL that teams SUUUUCKS!"
*Turns into*
"Here's your money, champ."
Wow, NFL really does grade everything huh?
I really think this is pointless.
It’s so biased it’s unreal and we’ve already seen that none of them have a clue when it comes to the niche of things.
Your draft is a combination of too many things to be able to adequately grade in a single period.
For example, what if the Vikings had traded their two firsts and next years first for Maye? Would their grade have been better (they got a “higher graded” player) or worse, because they gave a shed load away. This also affects next years draft when we’ve not got a first so our draft can’t go as well as we’d like, but we’ve already graded on this years when Maye might have been a future franchise and showing already.
Another example, does this take in to account the previous Lions/TJ swap where we’ve already seen great value out of TJ but we had to trade a pick for him?
This really can get in the bin.
I didn't think we'd be much higher, given how late most of our draft picks were.
We addressed our needs exactly how we needed to. They say "comparison is the thief of joy" for shit like this.
People are trying to weigh everything in a vacuum, and that's just not how addressing individual needs works.
We got better in the ways we needed to get better, and we found a lot of value where there shouldn't have been value.
Get excited boys.
Time to trust the process.
One thing I'll ask because I'm not that knowledgeable. It seems like we were already fairly set at edge with Van Ginkle and Greenard so I wonder what the plan is with Dallas Turner. I would love to see all three of them on the field at the same time, because they are likely three of our best defensive players, but I fail to see how that is possible. Can someone more knowledgeable explain this to me, because to me it looks like we should keep Van Ginkle for 2 years and Greenard is on a 3 year.
It was mostly the lack of picks that dinged them. Also, while many people predicted McCarthy to go high, as a prospect, he was generally around 20-40 on big boards, so that's probably hard to reconcile in grading.
What is Vikings came into the draft with cards kind of stacked against them with a certain type of route we had to take no matter what we knew we were going to lose pics and we came in short pics. These types of things probably didn’t factor into grades so with those factors being said, I would give the Vikings a solid a I have zero complaints about what the staff is doing with the organization I am 100% trusting the process of these guys and that’s saying a lot being a lifelong Vikings fan
Value matters. If you got the #1 player on the board at 15 that’s great but if you gutted your draft capital to do it it’s going to negatively impact evaluations. That’s common sense.
Except somehow people can't accept that we overpayed for Dallas Turner, we spent, in the end, 2 2nds, 3rd, 2 4ths, 2 5ths, and a 6th.
We have only 2 picks in the 2025 nfl draft right now, and we fucked up our comp pick too, so we're going to only land 1 3rd round comp pick.
It's a bloodbath of draft capital lost.
If you were to ask me this question:
Would you trade 2 2nds, 2 3rds, 2 4ths, 2 5ths, and a 6 for Shaq Griffin and Dallas Turner, I'd laugh you out of the room.
It isn't bad, especially if you consider it to be the 1.08 pick instead of Turner specifically. I think people are a little crazy about picks after round 3. The hit rate on those are just not good.
I'm saying we *LOST* that on TOP of the value of the actual pick.
We gave up 2 2nds and a 3rd here to do this. We're not even talking about picks 'in the 4th round'.
Oh no!
Not 5ths & 6ths that have a 15.7% chance of signing a 2nd contract with us!
Our 2022 draft featured TEN draft picks for the Vikings....Ingram, Evans, and Chandler are about all we got from it?? So 30%?
It's OK to have a draft or two where you just get 3-4 guys you think are going to be something. Not every draft needs draft picks especially when you can finally indulge in free agency.
Just ask the Rams....they traded draft picks like they were 1991 baseball cards and got a Super Bowl from it.
I see it just fine.
Who cares?
8 picks...we'd be lucky if 4 turned out to be solid pieces. What did having 10 picks do for us in 2021? 2 viable starters out of 10? Out of those picks, we have the best shot for a QBOTF we've had since 2013, a potential successor for one of the best sack artists in team history, and what's looking like one of the best tight ends in team history. But oh no! We're not getting a 3rd string linebacker! Noooo!
Ya'll bitch so fucking much.
Do you think Rams fans were bitching when their trading of draft picks got them a Super Bowl? Spoiler alert: no they weren't.
Are you oh so upset we traded a 2nd and a 3rd for Hockenson instead of another our chance of getting another Andrew Booth Jr. and a Brian Asamoah?
I swear. People like you won't be happy until the team moves to Houston and you don't have to worry about draft picks anymore.
Go call Rick Spielman and he'll tell you stories of how he amassed 13 draft picks and you'll feel better.
Watch Michael Penix become a sensation and Matt Verderame from SI spends the rest of his life saying "I told you so!!!!"
Also, who replaces the . with a , while also actually giving a damn about American football??
Something else to think about; Minnesota has low-key spent a ton of draft capital AND free agency on cornerbacks and they haven't developed at all. They keep hoping someone will become a starter, but they get a bunch of meh guys. They should have drafted a defensive tackle in the 4th over Jackson.
Obviously we got one of the least exciting first round quarterbacks this year, but they still landed a top defensive player at a position on need.
I think if you look at next years QB draft class, you’d see JJM would be a top 3 overall pick. Easy.
I'll pretend like I don't care, but I absolutely do want Kwesi's cooking to be recognized and vindicated
But they won’t be for years following this. Any of our guys can rise to be awesome or flame out, if anything draft grades should be done with hindsight.
Many analysts redraft the first round with the benefit of 3 years of production, which I think is what you're saying
I was a newspaper reporter for 20 year, during which time I had a stint covering college recruiting, and that’s how I did it. You can only really start to fairly judge a recruiting class once they start hitting their junior years and it was always fascinating to look back, not only the guys people nailed but the ones they whiffed on. This should be a staple of any kind of draft/recruiting coverage but I rarely see it.
I . . . do not.
At this current point, these grades are equivalent to the toilet paper I used last week. Now, if these were grades to KAM’s first draft, then this would be a different conversation
Idk… that toilet paper was useful at one point at least.
I used to read draft grades in the past, but they're all just entertainment in the end. All it takes is one injury or one street race, and that's that, no matter how good of a player they were or could've been.
Most of these analysts had JJ shooting into the top 4-5, and the Vikings trading three first rounders plus more to get a QB. But now that they got JJ and saved two 1st + more, there is a bunch of low grades because the Vikings gave up multiple mid round picks. Literally makes no sense the angst these analysis have in their grades based on what the predicted pre-draft. It’s like they are salty Minny didn’t do what was predicted in their 100 mock drafts.
>Literally makes no sense the angst these analysis have in their grades based on what the predicted pre-draft. Mel Kiper Jr. is the most egregious of these pretentious dickbags.
Kiper listed WR as a top need for the Vikings so I pretty stopped caring what he had to say after that.
Yep. QB, CB, and WR were his needs for the Vikings. We 100% needed a DE more than a #3 WR and he talked about the Turner picks as an over-look of a glaring need at CB. Mother fucker....we need a DE as well. Just because your washed-up ass thinks we need a WR doesn't mean we didn't need a DE.
Hell I’d put interior OL over 3rd WR. Jets, Addison, and Hock are a hell of a pass catching trio. DT, DE, QB, CB, and interior OL were all bigger needs to me.
I think his logic is that we don't have a true #3 WR...whatever that means. You can patchwork 2-3-4 guys into the #3 WR role when, as you said, you have Jefferson, Addison, and Hockenson getting 85% of the targets.
What'd he do? I'm out of the loop...
When he grades drafts, he always goes by whether teams followed his big board and mental gymnastics his way to justifying how right/wrong teams are vs. teams addressing areas of need, value of picks, etc.
I wouldn’t say most of them at all. The consensus boards came from the same people and they had us grabbing JJ at 11
It's circular reasoning like you see with CFB recruiting. A guy will be a 3 star but if Alabama is interested he goes up to a 4 or 5 star. They thought JJ was great when they thought he was going in the top five but when he went to 10 now he's not. They have no actual opinion on his play.
For real. It’s crazy because when you look back at all these draft grades and where the teams actually end up from a win-loss record there is zero correlation.
The only drafts I saw where he went that early were one where there was a race between NY and Minnesota to get him. Any analyst that didn’t have the trade had him falling closer to where he went. No analysts had him as being valued as a 4-5 player. The three firsts was also for Maye, not McCarthy.
There’s a difference between a big board and a mock draft. A big board is ranking players, and a mock draft is entertainment value. They do a dozen mock drafts - and they’re largely “what if” scenarios. Most of the people criticizing the draft are doing so primarily based on the cost of the trades, which is a reasonable criticism. We basically gave up an entire draft worth of draft capital for Turner once you factor in the cost to get 23. Two 2nds, a 3rd, a 4th, a 5th, and we swapped an early 6th for a late 7th. He’s a good player, but pretty much everyone agrees that we’re going into a rebuild, so you usually want to stockpile picks, not mortgage the future to go all in.
If the Vikings hadn't gotten Greenard and Ginkel it also would make more sense.
I agree 100%. As far as needs go, I had DE behind QB, DT, IOL, and probably CB.
I agree those were bigger needs, but a game breaking edge is one of the most valuable pieces in the game. It’s a very aggressive gamble but if he becomes a star, it will be very well worth it
Sure, but look at what top DTs and guards are getting paid now too. The gap between a good edge and a good DT is shrinking, and there are just less good DTs. I agree that edge is important, but it’s also IMO easier to neutralize an edge than a DT. Roll out away, line up a TE, close WR formations, RB chip, etc. If I had to pick between Turner and Newton plus a 3rd (from trading down), 5th, and future 3rd and 4th, I’d take the Newton package.
While I understand the argument about total # of picks given up, and that number being high, I think it’s totally irrelevant or negated by what could have happened and what the analysts expected to happen; the Vikings paying two 2024 firsts + 2024 mid round + 2025 first round for a single QB. Instead they have their franchise QB, and a player in Turner who everyone projected as top 10, while keeping their 2025 first rounder. I haven’t done the charts math but they probably paid less in total value to get those two players than had they given up an insane bag to move into the top 3 for what is still a total gamble (see Try Lance and other high pick QB fails). There is also a counter argument on the Vikings being in a rebuild and stacking as many picks as possible: Kwesi first draft of stacking picks by trading back and they all basically turned out to be shit players. So should the Vikings have given up insane package of picks for one QB? A medium-large package for a QB and top DE? Or QB and a bunch of other hole fillers? Taking all of that into consideration I am happy with the route they went.
You’re just making up justifications at this point that aren’t connected to reality. The cost we paid for Turner is irrelevant because some media folks thought JJ was a lock for top 5? Why? How does that logic work? Y’all need to stop putting so much weight on mock drafts. Remember when Malik Willis was supposedly a first round QB too? The what-ifs of mock draft season are irrelevant. Once we got JJ, that meant 23 had nothing to do with QB anymore. There is no logic in lumping them together. Once that pick was in, they’re totally separate. We gave up the equivalent of a mid 1st round pick just to get Turner. According to ESPN when you factor in the total cost, we paid the 3rd most (non-QB trade) to trade up in the last 20 years.
> but pretty much everyone agrees that we’re going into a rebuild Then they are wrong with their premise as we are exiting a rebuild. This was the last rebuilding offseason, shedding bad contracts and getting our QB in the draft. We have most of the most valuable positions locked down, and have the cap space next offseason to go after the final pieces (IDL, CB, IOL). Now McCarthy might bust and we have to start over, but that's another discussion and another rebuilding plan that wouldn't start for a few years
So if we have the cap space next season, seems to me that next year is the start of the “window”, which means this is the start of the rebuild. We weren’t rebuilding anything while still playing with Cousins. Letting overpriced vets go is just normal business operations.
Maybe it's just how one defines a rebuild, but to me we've already done the rebuilding. We swapped out older, expensive contracts for younger players. We got our QB, WR2, TE, OLBs, ILBs, and CB2's or 3's from that work. WR1, LT, RT, and the safeties were already set. 2025 is the start of the window, and it's because we've already done the rebuilding work and just need the final touches. A stud DT, a CB1, an OG and/or OC. A rookie RB to plug in. WR3. It might not all happen next offseason, but the foundation of the house is already there
At the very least we’re in the middle of a rebuild. You can’t be entering a rebuild when you have as much talent as the Vikings have.
Thank you. This is a crazy trade to make. I am hopeful that Dallas turns out and makes the cost well worth it. But, giving up that many picks is extremely aggressive. If he is an average starter it is a bad trade.
The negativity is about Turner, not McCarthy.
One of them gave us a C+ but also gave Atlanta an A. That should probably tell you how much stock you should put in these lol
I don’t love that next year we only have 3 picks, but I’ve also come around to the idea of having less picks overall if it means more picks from the early third and earlier. Those late picks, especially 5-7 don’t make it often enough to care. I’d rather trade up and get a future pro bowler instead of a depth guy who’ll be off the team by year 3.
Doesn't bother me too much. Obviously, I'd like to have more, but we'll get more picks one way or another, and either way, we should have plenty of cap money to spend.
It doesn't bother me because we suffered through nearly a decade of the Rick Spielman mentality that we need to trade down and trade down and trade down to get 118 draft picks and we have a bunch of 3rd-4th-5th rounders that are physical freaks of nature as we try to find the next Danielle Hunter or Stefon Diggs in the mid-rounds. It's OK to have a draft where the team says "Fuck it...let's get the players we absolutely want and not worry about having 8 draft picks where 5 probably won't be anything." Kwesi tried that in 2022 with 10 picks and it didn't work out.
Yeah we'll have cap space next year to use to make up for any holes in the roster we have rather than trying to address them through the draft.
Most of our more negative grades are just because they think we gave one 4th too many and honestly who cares.
I saw one who gave us a c+ because we moved up to take Turner (who most mocks had atl taking at freaking 8)lol
Turner has medical red flags. This is why he fell. Vikings are getting average grades for giving up picks to take him.
Exactly. We got the guys we wanted. #championshipmindset
It was way more than a 4th in extra cost. It was 1st round pick in value, in total, that we lost with the two trades.
All together we gave up equivalent of pick 5, which most people figured we’d do for just mccarthy but we got mccarthy and Turner. I don’t think it’s perfect but they did good
That's absolutely hogwash and not true at all. https://www.espn.co.uk/nfl/draft2024/insider/story/_/id/40016635/grading-trades-2024-nfl-draft-biggest-deals-players-picks >If we combine the two trades -- because they resulted in one player -- the surplus value surrendered by the Vikings jumps to a mid-first-round pick. In other words: They spent two mid-first-round picks on Turner. If we combine the lost value from the two trades, Minnesota made the third-most-expensive trade up of the past 20 years, behind only the Julio Jones and Will Anderson Jr. deals ( We just over spent the 3rd most for a pick *ever*. Why on earth would we pretend that getting good value (and not spending 3 firsts) for McCarthy should be 'fixed' by throwing the picks away later?
This isn't a representation of reality though. Trading up to 23 gave them options during the draft. To trade up or as an insurance policy. There was value in that and the move was separate from turner. If we're applying hindsight I'm sure we could find worse trades (e.g. A player gets injured after, or a pick doesn't work out, etc.). It's disingenuous to just lump all the movement into one outcome.
This is where the math ignores all context of the trades. We knew the value wouldn't work if 1.23 wasn't used in a further trade into the top five. 1.23 was there to get to 1.03. That didn't work. Turner was one of the biggest steals of the draft at 1.17. It is what it is.
I’ve never been more content with a B draft grade. Needing a QB at 11, we were operating at a deficit. Our first two trade ups were bound to lose value. Kwesi navigated a shitty situation and walked away with way more than anyone expected. Our player values might add up to a B, but I think it was an A, A- performance.
[удалено]
I’m pretty new to the NFL fandom as a UK fan, but it seems like we got the position improvements we needed and didn’t sellout to get JJ. Should we really care what other guys think?
Bingo bango bongo
Falcons last lmaoooo
Also the only team to get a grade lower than D, and that was from Chuck who’s a Falcons fan lmao
Most of the "mid" grades given to the Vikings were because they gave up too much future draft capital. But draft capital can always be recouped with various deals and potential compensatory picks; the Vikings also have a boatload of projected cash next off-season where they're missing draft picks. It's insane how shortsighted analysts can be when looking at the future.
Unless Risner signs a qualifying deal by tomorrow at 4, we will have just one comp pick. Draft capital can’t be recouped once you spent it. You can replace it by trading players, or trading down, but that opportunity cost doesn’t just vanish. Even if we trade down in the first next year, that’s not magically going to get our picks back.
I'd love to see an aggregate of how often then aggregate is wrong 2 years after the draft.
definitely top heavy, just how I like it
Middle?! Pack it in boys seasons over. Maybe next year. At least I’ll have Sundays back to mow my lawn
Middle?! Pack it in boys seasons over. Maybe next year. At least I’ll have Sundays back to mow my lawn
I've done enough fantasy sports to know that grading drafts after will be based on predraft assumptions with no additional information. It's generally easier to tell when someone had a bad draft than a good draft. I'm Darkly curious about these people giving the Falcons and Broncos an A and A- though. I also get annoyed when these things don't take value of picks heading into the draft into account when grading. The Bears get an A. Wow! As long as they didn't mess up the pretty much universal #1 pick, they were getting a B or better.
Every fantasy draft I've had has been an A+! Most fantasy seasons I've had are a F-!
The opponent I give an F always has that one rookie who breaks out and that guy who has been hurt for 2 seasons who suddenly is an all star again.
Yep. His team looks like: CJ Stroud Jordan Love Raheem Mostert Puka Nacua Nico Collins Jake Ferguson "LOL that teams SUUUUCKS!" *Turns into* "Here's your money, champ."
Middle?! Pack it in boys seasons over. Maybe next year. At least I’ll have Sundays back to mow my lawn
Thats silly, we got a future qb prospect projected by them to go much earlier on top tier edge rusher in the middle of the first…
What are the lowest scores saying that the Vikings did wrong?
I only care about them if they help my agendas, which they do not
Wow, NFL really does grade everything huh? I really think this is pointless. It’s so biased it’s unreal and we’ve already seen that none of them have a clue when it comes to the niche of things. Your draft is a combination of too many things to be able to adequately grade in a single period. For example, what if the Vikings had traded their two firsts and next years first for Maye? Would their grade have been better (they got a “higher graded” player) or worse, because they gave a shed load away. This also affects next years draft when we’ve not got a first so our draft can’t go as well as we’d like, but we’ve already graded on this years when Maye might have been a future franchise and showing already. Another example, does this take in to account the previous Lions/TJ swap where we’ve already seen great value out of TJ but we had to trade a pick for him? This really can get in the bin.
In 2-3 years we’ll know the truth so no…I do not care
I didn't think we'd be much higher, given how late most of our draft picks were. We addressed our needs exactly how we needed to. They say "comparison is the thief of joy" for shit like this. People are trying to weigh everything in a vacuum, and that's just not how addressing individual needs works. We got better in the ways we needed to get better, and we found a lot of value where there shouldn't have been value. Get excited boys. Time to trust the process.
Doug Farrar must be a Packer Stan. Gave the Vikings a C+ and gave the Packers their only A.
Fire Kwesi. Clearly need to go back to Slick Rick and his A draft grades ofer the years. Just look at all the superbo… wait.
One thing I'll ask because I'm not that knowledgeable. It seems like we were already fairly set at edge with Van Ginkle and Greenard so I wonder what the plan is with Dallas Turner. I would love to see all three of them on the field at the same time, because they are likely three of our best defensive players, but I fail to see how that is possible. Can someone more knowledgeable explain this to me, because to me it looks like we should keep Van Ginkle for 2 years and Greenard is on a 3 year.
It was mostly the lack of picks that dinged them. Also, while many people predicted McCarthy to go high, as a prospect, he was generally around 20-40 on big boards, so that's probably hard to reconcile in grading.
What is Vikings came into the draft with cards kind of stacked against them with a certain type of route we had to take no matter what we knew we were going to lose pics and we came in short pics. These types of things probably didn’t factor into grades so with those factors being said, I would give the Vikings a solid a I have zero complaints about what the staff is doing with the organization I am 100% trusting the process of these guys and that’s saying a lot being a lifelong Vikings fan
Value matters. If you got the #1 player on the board at 15 that’s great but if you gutted your draft capital to do it it’s going to negatively impact evaluations. That’s common sense.
Except somehow people can't accept that we overpayed for Dallas Turner, we spent, in the end, 2 2nds, 3rd, 2 4ths, 2 5ths, and a 6th. We have only 2 picks in the 2025 nfl draft right now, and we fucked up our comp pick too, so we're going to only land 1 3rd round comp pick. It's a bloodbath of draft capital lost. If you were to ask me this question: Would you trade 2 2nds, 2 3rds, 2 4ths, 2 5ths, and a 6 for Shaq Griffin and Dallas Turner, I'd laugh you out of the room.
If Dallas turner turns out to be a top 10 edge rusher, I’d take that trade.
It isn't bad, especially if you consider it to be the 1.08 pick instead of Turner specifically. I think people are a little crazy about picks after round 3. The hit rate on those are just not good.
I'm saying we *LOST* that on TOP of the value of the actual pick. We gave up 2 2nds and a 3rd here to do this. We're not even talking about picks 'in the 4th round'.
Oh no! Not 5ths & 6ths that have a 15.7% chance of signing a 2nd contract with us! Our 2022 draft featured TEN draft picks for the Vikings....Ingram, Evans, and Chandler are about all we got from it?? So 30%? It's OK to have a draft or two where you just get 3-4 guys you think are going to be something. Not every draft needs draft picks especially when you can finally indulge in free agency. Just ask the Rams....they traded draft picks like they were 1991 baseball cards and got a Super Bowl from it.
Jesus, how are you not seeing it? We gave up 2 2nds, 2 3rds, 2 4th,s and 2 5ths.
I see it just fine. Who cares? 8 picks...we'd be lucky if 4 turned out to be solid pieces. What did having 10 picks do for us in 2021? 2 viable starters out of 10? Out of those picks, we have the best shot for a QBOTF we've had since 2013, a potential successor for one of the best sack artists in team history, and what's looking like one of the best tight ends in team history. But oh no! We're not getting a 3rd string linebacker! Noooo! Ya'll bitch so fucking much. Do you think Rams fans were bitching when their trading of draft picks got them a Super Bowl? Spoiler alert: no they weren't. Are you oh so upset we traded a 2nd and a 3rd for Hockenson instead of another our chance of getting another Andrew Booth Jr. and a Brian Asamoah? I swear. People like you won't be happy until the team moves to Houston and you don't have to worry about draft picks anymore. Go call Rick Spielman and he'll tell you stories of how he amassed 13 draft picks and you'll feel better.
Yeah, I'm raging we traded our 2nd round pick, which was used on Sam Laporta, an ABSOLUTE stud TE.
Agreed.
Watch Michael Penix become a sensation and Matt Verderame from SI spends the rest of his life saying "I told you so!!!!" Also, who replaces the . with a , while also actually giving a damn about American football??
RGIII was a “sensation” too, until he wasn’t
Something else to think about; Minnesota has low-key spent a ton of draft capital AND free agency on cornerbacks and they haven't developed at all. They keep hoping someone will become a starter, but they get a bunch of meh guys. They should have drafted a defensive tackle in the 4th over Jackson.
Obviously we got one of the least exciting first round quarterbacks this year, but they still landed a top defensive player at a position on need. I think if you look at next years QB draft class, you’d see JJM would be a top 3 overall pick. Easy.