Quote: @"MaroonBells" said:
OK, Mr. Sudden Impact, I believe the guy you wanted was Jameson Williams. We talked about that quite a bit, with you arguing that he would be ready early in the season and me arguing that he probably wouldn't contribute much at all his first season. Fast forward 9 months and he caught one pass. Even after he was healthy, his coach commented that it wasn't "clicking" for him.
And whether you like it or not, people with experience in analytics and economics are the future of NFL leadership positions.
I thought he might be ready by Halloween, but at the very least I thought he could be a difference maker for the playoff run. I still believe he will be a very good player for the Lions and would have went a long ways in solidifying our WR core for next season. Now WR is a position of need (one of many) with Thielen likely on his way out the door.
And no, I'm not a fan of analytics and economics majors running my franchise.
My concern is that if you look at this season, we have Zero Playmakers on Defense that consistently can take over a game. Z. Smith started the year on fire and quickly faded. He pretty much disappeared the second half of the season due to injuries and was just not effective. Hunter never figured it out except for a couple of games late in the season. Our interior DLine is below average, the play of our Linebackers and the majority of our Defensive Backs sucked all year. Some of them had a moment where they flashed every once in a while, but nothing consistent. Outside of the Green Bay game, we were getting torched week in and week out and had it not been the magical play of Cousins and JJ generating 9 come from behind victories we would have never made the playoffs let alone won the Division. We won in spite of our Defense. That is not all on KAM as he inherited the players from the Previous Regime but his draft maneuvering didn't make this team better, especially the defense which we knew had major holes coming into the offseason. IMO, KAM treated the draft like he was back on Wall Street trading stocks and for that he deserves some scrutiny and criticism. If we can get some mileage out of the veterans we have by simply changing the scheme and DC, then great. Maybe there is hope for next season. If it's truly an Age and Declining Talent issue then I think we will be at the bottom of the league in defense again next year because I'm not sold on KAM as a draft evaluator yet and the talent gap will be too great to overcome while we have Cousins and JJ in their prime.
Quote: @"supafreak84" said:
@"MaroonBells" said:
OK, Mr. Sudden Impact, I believe the guy you wanted was Jameson Williams. We talked about that quite a bit, with you arguing that he would be ready early in the season and me arguing that he probably wouldn't contribute much at all his first season. Fast forward 9 months and he caught one pass. Even after he was healthy, his coach commented that it wasn't "clicking" for him.
And whether you like it or not, people with experience in analytics and economics are the future of NFL leadership positions.
I thought he might be ready by Halloween, but at the very least I thought he could be a difference maker for the playoff run. I still believe he will be a very good player for the Lions and would have went a long ways in solidifying our WR core for next season. Now WR is a position of need (one of many) with Thielen likely on his way out the door.
And no, I'm not a fan of analytics and economics majors running my franchise.
So, you’re giving him a year to develop? Maybe you should give Kwesi’s first draft class the same benefit.
Quote: @"Riphawkins" said:
So, you’re giving him a year to develop? Maybe you should give Kwesi’s first draft class the same benefit.
I will happily revisit this topic then with you next January. We'll put it on the calendar
Quote: @"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
So, you’re giving him a year to develop? Maybe you should give Kwesi’s first draft class the same benefit.
I will happily revisit this topic then with you next January. We'll put it on the calendar
I’m sure you will. Unless we are still playing and those guys are contributing.
Quote: @"Riphawkins" said:
@"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
So, you’re giving him a year to develop? Maybe you should give Kwesi’s first draft class the same benefit.
I will happily revisit this topic then with you next January. We'll put it on the calendar
I’m sure you will. Unless we are still playing and those guys are contributing.
And if we aren't and they aren't contributing (again) I'm sure it will be crickets
Quote: @"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
@"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
So, you’re giving him a year to develop? Maybe you should give Kwesi’s first draft class the same benefit.
I will happily revisit this topic then with you next January. We'll put it on the calendar
I’m sure you will. Unless we are still playing and those guys are contributing.
And if we aren't and they aren't contributing (again) I'm sure it will be crickets
You are the guy who seems to have the need to be right about this. I gave an opinion just like you.
One of those opinions is; You seem to give other teams and players more chances than Vikings players to prove they can play. I wasn’t the one who felt the need to mark it on my calendar for future reference.
In a year I most likely won’t remember this thread even took place. Nor will I care.
If you need to “win” this argument or discussion. You win! Saved you the need to bring it up later.
I'd prefer not be right because I want this team to win just like we all do, but it's fair to call a spade a spade and this draft class was lousy and made little to no impact for a team that badly needed it. You all want to give Kwesi a pass and shoot sunshine out your asses about how "impressive" his draft class was when it clearly wasn't. So let's give it another year, we can revisit this topic and see how these guys develop, if at all. We can also revisit the impact of the guys we let our division rivals draft (Williams and Watson) in comparison to the guys we drafted and see what the scale says. So I won't say any more about the golden child and this draft class until next January. Next topic
I always believed you should grade a draft class after two or three years. Hopefully the injured guys get healthy and have more impact going forward. Time will tell how KAM's first draft was.
Quote: @"supafreak84" said:
@"Riphawkins" said:
Pretty high
One year in and they won the division. KAM and KOC will or at least should get better at decision making. I was honestly surprised by some of the cuts made this past offseason. Hard decisions will be made and I think KAM can make them. I don’t think there is a reason to think he wouldn’t want to put the best product out there.
The Wilf family just needs to stay out of the way a little bit. I know they wanted a soft retooling instead of a complete rebuild, which I agree with. Blowing up a roster just because never made sense to me.
Pinning Donatell on KOC is fair, however you have to look at the big picture that is the NFL coaching tree. Sometimes coordinators want more control or freedom to do what they want, or see the personnel on a team and say, Nope!We don’t know who was talked to or who was considered besides Donatell. Maybe other coaches didn’t want to attach themselves to KOC, thinking he’s young and it could hurt their career. You never know all the details.
Depth is something that will probably be lacking for at least another year. The decisions that take place this off season will impact that. You can’t do wholesale cuts and expect to be deep.
I hope this draft goes well, I hope they fix some of the problems on the defensive side of the ball, while still trying to add weapons and good depth on the O line.
Speaking of the O line, they were good at times, and they were bad at times. But, they were better than the past and they did see some young players step up and contribute. Brandel has become a very good swing tackle IMO, and honestly Bradbury stepped up his game. They’ll need to resign or replace this offseason. Is the o line elite? No, but name the starting 5 O linemen for the 6 Super Bowls Belicheat won.
I’m good with the path the Vikings are on. We’ll see in a few years who was right.
We could both be wrong.
Well, here is the situation. The Vikings are 7.4 million OVER the projected salary cap for 2023. We have a lot of older veteran players that we will need to make decisions on. There is not a single free agent on this roster I would bring back (including Bradbury) and what do we do with Cousins moving forward, who is once again going into the final year of his contract and will be 35 years old. We drafted 10 players last year and we have no idea if any of them can play or add any sort of quality depth. We have needs along the defensive line, at linebacker, we have no idea if any of the young corners on the roster are any good so does this also become a need? Thielen likely will be a salary cut in June, so finding a starting caliber receiver somewhere that can take the double and triple teams off JJ becomes a priority. We traded off draft picks for Reagor and Hockenson.
This team has huge question marks up and down the roster and I simply do not trust this front office to make the right decisions when the right decision was to blow this thing up last offseason. I would have gladly taken a 5-12 season this year with Baker Mayfield at the helm (per say), salary cap room, extra draft picks, and a top 5 draft pick heading into next season. Instead, we blew our wads trying to piece this together with duct tape, got bounced in the first round of the playoffs, and once again have to address the same problems and issues as last offseason.
The Vikings are actually 24.551M over according to overthecap.
Several players have updated salaries. Ezra Cleveland is at $2,995,000 up from $1,365,076, Cameron Dantzler at up $2,745,000 from $1,154,000, DJ Wonnum is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000, and KJ Osborn is at $2,745,000 up from $1,010,000. That is an extra $6,690,924.
Players on rookie contracts are eligible for an escalator mainly based on how much they play.
https://frontofficenfl.com/2020/06/04/2020-nfl-cba-explained-proven-performance-escalator-ppe-in-rookie-contracts/
Beginning with the 2018 draft class, players drafted in the second through seventh rounds are eligible to receive the Level One, Level Two or Level Three PPE.
In order to qualify for Level One, second-round picks must either (a) play 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays in any two of his first three seasons or (b) participate in a cumulative average of 60 percent of his team’s offensive or defensive plays over the course of his first three regular seasons. For third- through seventh-round picks, players can hit either (a) or (b) above, but the threshold to reach drops to 35 percent of such plays.
Also, there were some practice squad players added to get to 51. Tay Gowan at $940,000, William Kwenkeu at $870,000, Trishton Jackson at $870,000, Nick Muse at $870,000, and Kalon Barnes at $870,000 for a total of $4,420,000.
All together the extra is $11,110,924.
The team is in a tight spot.
Potential cuts/trades with savings
Eric Kendrick - 9.5M
Jordan Hicks - 5M
Adam Thielen - 6.4M
Harrison Smith - 7.4M
Dalvin Cook - 7.9M
CJ Ham - 3M
Chris Reed - 2.5M
Za'Darius Smith - 13.6M
If they moved on from these players they save 55.4M and would have 30.9M in cap space.
They could restructure 12M of O'Neill's salary and get an extra 9M.
They could give Hockenson a 4 yr 58M deal with nice signing bonus and save 5M.
They can extend Tomlinson and NOT have it change his 7.5M cap hit that is already there at all.
They would have 44.9M available with these moves without touching Cousins deal which they should not.
Give JJ a 5 year 165M deal with a 40M signing bonus and it costs 8M in cap space.
That takes the available space down to 36.9M.
All they have left after that is to decide if they want to extend or trade Hunter. I wonder if Seattle would give up #20 plus a 2024 (3rd or 4th) for Hunter?
I'm not sure they should extend Bradbury with the strong center class in the draft. Plus, it could take 10M apy or more.
I would target Germaine Pratt LB and Cameron Sutton CB in free agency.
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