NFL reporters pick the Lions often as a sleeper team, or a team to watch. But year after year, they fizzle. Until they actually play a compete season of competent football, I am not buying in. I have to think they pick them so if the Lions do actually pull it together, they can reference back and say, See, told ya, It's like a golf. One good hole in a sea of double bogeys doesn't make you a good golfer.
Quote: @MaroonBells said:
@ supafreak84 said:
@ comet52 said:
@ supafreak84 said:
@ StickyBun said:
@ supafreak84 said:
Let's face it, Kwesi was an outside the box, taking a chance kind of hire in the first place. I'm just not a believer in handing the keys over to a guy who wasn't a former player or has a scouting background and I was not in favor of his hire. His first offseason was an almost total bust between signing guys who made little to no impact on a defense that was one of the worst units in the league from a talent standpoint or making trades that didn't work out (Reagor, Blacklock). Zadarius was good for half a season, got injured which is his M.O., and is on his way out the door here at some point. Kwesi was absolutely fleeced repeatedly in draft value in his first draft and the players he selected made almost zero impact, unless we count Ingram's season of average to below average play. If you want to give him credit for hiring KOC, cool, but you also have to acknowledge the decision to bring in Ed Donatell to run the defense and oversee the total transition to a new scheme was just one of theeee worst decisions ever and completely predictable to be the disaster that it was. I thought Kwesi really needed a big draft to overcome the shit show of last offseason and I was okay with this draft. I would have taken some different players at certain spots, but that doesn't mean I didn't like the players that we did select. The bottom line for me is that I just do not agree with the way they do the business of roster building and I'm not sure what the long-term vision is. Kwesi has an uphill battle in trying to manage the Wilf's expectations while trying to keep the roster talented enough to contend. I don't know. This upcoming year is going to be very telling in where this franchise is headed in the future.
I don't think this is the year to tell: next year is the year to know. Still working through some previous cap limitations.
13 wins and a NFCN title: never gets talked about by the KAM naysayers. The stuff some of you focus on is very interesting....I guess that's the nice way to put it, lol.
It doesn't get talked about because his roster contributions last season outside of the mid-season Hockenson trade were nonexistent. We got nothing from his draft unless you want to count Ingram, whom at one point of the season was the lowest rated guard in the league. His trades were busts and nobody cares about 13 wins and a north title when we got bounced (and predictably so) at home in the first round of the playoffs. My neighbor Bob, who is a mailman, could have navigated the same type of offseason. For someone who is allegedly some whizz kid and smarter than everyone else, I have yet to see it. That's why I say he needed a big draft to erase some of the stink in his handling of last offseason. Did it happen? I don't know. I thought it was an average draft which will depend a ton on Addison and what kind of impact he can make.
Hard to get a "big" draft out of our weak batch of picks in a really weak draft class . Still, the proclivity for smallish guys is a head scratcher to me and I would not take a WR2 with a first round pick.
That said, nothing he's done so far has me thinking we're headed up the on-ramp to a title run. The football-by-committee approach of ownership probably precludes that regardless of who the g.m. is. We're supposed to settle for good but never great and keep the revenue flowing like dutiful fans.
I was listening to NFL radio this morning with Soloman Wilcots and former Patriot RB James White. The topic was naming their top 5 teams in each conference post draft. When it got to the NFC, they both had the same teams, just in a slightly different order; Eagles, Seahawks, Cowboys, 49ers and Lions. While both liked the Addison selection, neither liked the Vikings offseason. I tend to concur with their projection and would probably throw the Giants in there ahead of the Vikings as well.
So all this once again leads me to....what are we doing? I don't think the Vikings and Kwesi know what they are doing. We are stuck somewhere between trying to appease the expectations of ownership and blowing up the roster on a reset. It's an awful position to be in and I think we are just trying to stay competitive while shuffling the cap and hoping to catch lightning in a bottle at some point.
I think we're doing what every other team in the NFL is doing, which is trying to build the best roster possible with the resources at our disposal. I know you think we should blow it all up so we can be the Commanders for a decade, but a 13-win team who won the North last year with good, young players like JJ, TJH, Darrisaw, O'Neill, Asamoah and Hunter was never a candidate to do that.
I think the Vikings are a better team in '23 with Cousins in year two, TJH a full season, Addison, Oliver, all five OLs returning, and several players on defense we didn't have last year, including Murphy, Davenport, Cine, Booth, and Evans...not to mention Brian Flores.
I also don't think our offseason is done, considering there's about $25M in cap space in potential moves for O'Neill, TJH, Cook, Z, etc. We'll see how it ends up, but it should be a good competition between us and the Lions for the title.
There’s reason for optimism as you laid out, but I am worried about the run game. It wasn’t any good last year and now apparently we’re getting rid of Dalvin. I’m not sure how that fixes anything.
If Addison is an improvement over Thielen that would be a welcome surprise. We definitely have playmakers catching the ball, which is exciting.
Quote: @Skodin said:
Allowing Harbaugh to leave Minnesota without a signed deal was a mistake. KAM has a lot to prove still
What is wrong with Kevin O'Connell? His first year was a smashing success IMO. Letting Harbaugh leave turned out just fine. More than fine even.
I'd rather have KOCs personality and smarts than Harbaugh who wore out his welcome in his first NFL stint a decade ago.
Quote: @AGRforever said:
@ supafreak84 said:
@ comet52 said:
@ supafreak84 said:
@ StickyBun said:
@ supafreak84 said:
Let's face it, Kwesi was an outside the box, taking a chance kind of hire in the first place. I'm just not a believer in handing the keys over to a guy who wasn't a former player or has a scouting background and I was not in favor of his hire. His first offseason was an almost total bust between signing guys who made little to no impact on a defense that was one of the worst units in the league from a talent standpoint or making trades that didn't work out (Reagor, Blacklock). Zadarius was good for half a season, got injured which is his M.O., and is on his way out the door here at some point. Kwesi was absolutely fleeced repeatedly in draft value in his first draft and the players he selected made almost zero impact, unless we count Ingram's season of average to below average play. If you want to give him credit for hiring KOC, cool, but you also have to acknowledge the decision to bring in Ed Donatell to run the defense and oversee the total transition to a new scheme was just one of theeee worst decisions ever and completely predictable to be the disaster that it was. I thought Kwesi really needed a big draft to overcome the shit show of last offseason and I was okay with this draft. I would have taken some different players at certain spots, but that doesn't mean I didn't like the players that we did select. The bottom line for me is that I just do not agree with the way they do the business of roster building and I'm not sure what the long-term vision is. Kwesi has an uphill battle in trying to manage the Wilf's expectations while trying to keep the roster talented enough to contend. I don't know. This upcoming year is going to be very telling in where this franchise is headed in the future.
I don't think this is the year to tell: next year is the year to know. Still working through some previous cap limitations.
13 wins and a NFCN title: never gets talked about by the KAM naysayers. The stuff some of you focus on is very interesting....I guess that's the nice way to put it, lol.
It doesn't get talked about because his roster contributions last season outside of the mid-season Hockenson trade were nonexistent. We got nothing from his draft unless you want to count Ingram, whom at one point of the season was the lowest rated guard in the league. His trades were busts and nobody cares about 13 wins and a north title when we got bounced (and predictably so) at home in the first round of the playoffs. My neighbor Bob, who is a mailman, could have navigated the same type of offseason. For someone who is allegedly some whizz kid and smarter than everyone else, I have yet to see it. That's why I say he needed a big draft to erase some of the stink in his handling of last offseason. Did it happen? I don't know. I thought it was an average draft which will depend a ton on Addison and what kind of impact he can make.
Hard to get a "big" draft out of our weak batch of picks in a really weak draft class . Still, the proclivity for smallish guys is a head scratcher to me and I would not take a WR2 with a first round pick.
That said, nothing he's done so far has me thinking we're headed up the on-ramp to a title run. The football-by-committee approach of ownership probably precludes that regardless of who the g.m. is. We're supposed to settle for good but never great and keep the revenue flowing like dutiful fans.
I was listening to NFL radio this morning with Soloman Wilcots and former Patriot RB James White. The topic was naming their top 5 teams in each conference post draft. When it got to the NFC, they both had the same teams, just in a slightly different order; Eagles, Seahawks, Cowboys, 49ers and Lions. While both liked the Addison selection, neither liked the Vikings offseason. I tend to concur with their projection and would probably throw the Giants in there ahead of the Vikings as well.
So all this once again leads me to....what are we doing? I don't think the Vikings and Kwesi know what they are doing. We are stuck somewhere between trying to appease the expectations of ownership and blowing up the roster on a reset. It's an awful position to be in and I think we are just trying to stay competitive while shuffling the cap and hoping to catch lightning in a bottle at some point.
You don't blow up 13 win rosters. You don't start over at QB. You don't trade your top talent. I agree, I'd like to find the post Cousins path but it can't happen if you can't draft the guy you want. I was on the trade it all for Anthony Richardson bandwagon. So the only other choices are to tank or let it ride. Ownership says tanking is out of the question. How is that KAM's fault? Its their freaking team. They can do whatever they want lol.
Maybe Cousins gets his leg blown up in the first couple games and we go on to a 3-4 win season that puts us in line for a new QB next year? After Stroud and Richardson were gone by pick 4 the only thing left to do was backfill the roster, which I thought they did well.
They like Addison. Who knows? After Addison, we basically spent the entire draft on defense. So answer this. Are we to trust that Flores had a say in who he wanted at what point in the draft to maximize his ability to field a defense? Or are we to assume KAM went rouge and drafted a bunch of kids that Flores and the big KOC had no say in?
We get it, you like Poles in Chicago and instead we hired KAM. You've made that point infinitely clear. Unless Fields takes a major step forward, they got nothing. Even if Fields takes a major step forward they're still a .500 team at best.
Lol I've never said anything about Poles outside of that I suspected he took the Chicago job because he could build that roster from the ground up without having to deal with the Wilfs and Cousins contract. So no....you don't get it
There is ALWAYS going to be something to improve upon...I suspect if I went over the Chiefs board, there are fans there fretting over something.
Nobody is happy with 1 and done in the playoffs, but there is certainly legit reason for optimism in 23.
Quote: @pattersaur said:
@ MaroonBells said:
@ supafreak84 said:
@ comet52 said:
@ supafreak84 said:
@ StickyBun said:
@ supafreak84 said:
Let's face it, Kwesi was an outside the box, taking a chance kind of hire in the first place. I'm just not a believer in handing the keys over to a guy who wasn't a former player or has a scouting background and I was not in favor of his hire. His first offseason was an almost total bust between signing guys who made little to no impact on a defense that was one of the worst units in the league from a talent standpoint or making trades that didn't work out (Reagor, Blacklock). Zadarius was good for half a season, got injured which is his M.O., and is on his way out the door here at some point. Kwesi was absolutely fleeced repeatedly in draft value in his first draft and the players he selected made almost zero impact, unless we count Ingram's season of average to below average play. If you want to give him credit for hiring KOC, cool, but you also have to acknowledge the decision to bring in Ed Donatell to run the defense and oversee the total transition to a new scheme was just one of theeee worst decisions ever and completely predictable to be the disaster that it was. I thought Kwesi really needed a big draft to overcome the shit show of last offseason and I was okay with this draft. I would have taken some different players at certain spots, but that doesn't mean I didn't like the players that we did select. The bottom line for me is that I just do not agree with the way they do the business of roster building and I'm not sure what the long-term vision is. Kwesi has an uphill battle in trying to manage the Wilf's expectations while trying to keep the roster talented enough to contend. I don't know. This upcoming year is going to be very telling in where this franchise is headed in the future.
I don't think this is the year to tell: next year is the year to know. Still working through some previous cap limitations.
13 wins and a NFCN title: never gets talked about by the KAM naysayers. The stuff some of you focus on is very interesting....I guess that's the nice way to put it, lol.
It doesn't get talked about because his roster contributions last season outside of the mid-season Hockenson trade were nonexistent. We got nothing from his draft unless you want to count Ingram, whom at one point of the season was the lowest rated guard in the league. His trades were busts and nobody cares about 13 wins and a north title when we got bounced (and predictably so) at home in the first round of the playoffs. My neighbor Bob, who is a mailman, could have navigated the same type of offseason. For someone who is allegedly some whizz kid and smarter than everyone else, I have yet to see it. That's why I say he needed a big draft to erase some of the stink in his handling of last offseason. Did it happen? I don't know. I thought it was an average draft which will depend a ton on Addison and what kind of impact he can make.
Hard to get a "big" draft out of our weak batch of picks in a really weak draft class . Still, the proclivity for smallish guys is a head scratcher to me and I would not take a WR2 with a first round pick.
That said, nothing he's done so far has me thinking we're headed up the on-ramp to a title run. The football-by-committee approach of ownership probably precludes that regardless of who the g.m. is. We're supposed to settle for good but never great and keep the revenue flowing like dutiful fans.
I was listening to NFL radio this morning with Soloman Wilcots and former Patriot RB James White. The topic was naming their top 5 teams in each conference post draft. When it got to the NFC, they both had the same teams, just in a slightly different order; Eagles, Seahawks, Cowboys, 49ers and Lions. While both liked the Addison selection, neither liked the Vikings offseason. I tend to concur with their projection and would probably throw the Giants in there ahead of the Vikings as well.
So all this once again leads me to....what are we doing? I don't think the Vikings and Kwesi know what they are doing. We are stuck somewhere between trying to appease the expectations of ownership and blowing up the roster on a reset. It's an awful position to be in and I think we are just trying to stay competitive while shuffling the cap and hoping to catch lightning in a bottle at some point.
I think we're doing what every other team in the NFL is doing, which is trying to build the best roster possible with the resources at our disposal. I know you think we should blow it all up so we can be the Commanders for a decade, but a 13-win team who won the North last year with good, young players like JJ, TJH, Darrisaw, O'Neill, Asamoah and Hunter was never a candidate to do that.
I think the Vikings are a better team in '23 with Cousins in year two, TJH a full season, Addison, Oliver, all five OLs returning, and several players on defense we didn't have last year, including Murphy, Davenport, Cine, Booth, and Evans...not to mention Brian Flores.
I also don't think our offseason is done, considering there's about $25M in cap space in potential moves for O'Neill, TJH, Cook, Z, etc. We'll see how it ends up, but it should be a good competition between us and the Lions for the title.
There’s reason for optimism as you laid out, but I am worried about the run game. It wasn’t any good last year and now apparently we’re getting rid of Dalvin. I’m not sure how that fixes anything.
If Addison is an improvement over Thielen that would be a welcome surprise. We definitely have playmakers catching the ball, which is exciting.
The running game is my biggest concern as well. But like a lot of teams in recent years, the Vikings appear headed toward a more cost-efficient RBBC approach. Mattison, Chandler, Nwangwu and McBride could be an effective rotation. Better than Dalvin at his best? No. But better than the Dalvin we saw last year? Yeah, maybe. I think Oliver helps. I also think that young line returning in tact is an underrated factor.
I'm reminded of the 49ers kicking our asses in the playoffs a couple years ago by using a RBBC, including the likes of Tevin Coleman, Matt Brieda and Raheem Mostert.
I'm not in favor of losing Cook. I think he brings a skillset to the table that I don't think you get in a RBBC approach. But if we are going to toss the ball around 40+ times a game then it probably doesn't matter.
My bigger concern is run DEFENSE and do we have the horses up front to stop the run? Our run defense was not good last season and the only reason teams didn't run against us more was the atrocious pass defense. I think our run defense will be tested a lot more this upcoming season and our starting DL currently would be Lowry, Tonga, and Phillips with Hicks and Asamoah behind them. I would have liked to have seen a bigger LB added in the draft. I'm hoping Roy can come in and contribute, otherwise it's Lynch, Blacklock, and Bullard, who were all basically non factors last season. I think our pass defense will be better under Flores, but the run defense will be a concern IMO
Quote: @supafreak84 said:
I'm not in favor of losing Cook. I think he brings a skillset to the table that I don't think you get in a RBBC approach. But if we are going to toss the ball around 40+ times a game then it probably doesn't matter.
My bigger concern is run DEFENSE and do we have the horses up front to stop the run? Our run defense was not good last season and the only reason teams didn't run against us more was the atrocious pass defense. I think our run defense will be tested a lot more this upcoming season and our starting DL currently would be Lowry, Tonga, and Phillips with Hicks and Asamoah behind them. I would have liked to have seen a bigger LB added in the draft. I'm hoping Roy can come in and contribute, otherwise it's Lynch, Blacklock, and Bullard, who were all basically non factors last season. I think our pass defense will be better under Flores, but the run defense will be a concern IMO
Yep, only one team had a worse defense than ours last year. And it's everyone's fancy new pick to win the North.
Kwesi doesn't want to allocate as much cap $ to the running back position and I sense KOC favors RBBC and passing anyway. The key to better running is better blocking. I guess that's why they like the blocking TE so much!
My biggest fear this season is still defense; stopping the run, getting pressure up the middle and covering on the back side. All areas of deficiency last year.
I favor the philosophy of building from the lines out and that hasn't been a priority for this team for awhile.
I'm impressed by teams who remain competitive year in and year out. Most of them have solid O and D lines.
That's not the Vikings.
Not going to knock this draft until I see the results. But it appears the first two drafts have been plugging holes with value picks. Hard for me to identify the overall strategy right now.
I hope they can get out of cap hell and stop being short on early round draft capitol. Then maybe they can wow us with their picks!
Quote: @supafreak84 said:
I was listening to NFL radio this morning with Soloman Wilcots and former Patriot RB James White. The topic was naming their top 5 teams in each conference post draft. When it got to the NFC, they both had the same teams, just in a slightly different order; Eagles, Seahawks, Cowboys, 49ers and Lions. While both liked the Addison selection, neither liked the Vikings offseason. I tend to concur with their projection and would probably throw the Giants in there ahead of the Vikings as well.
So all this once again leads me to....what are we doing? I don't think the Vikings and Kwesi know what they are doing. We are stuck somewhere between trying to appease the expectations of ownership and blowing up the roster on a reset. It's an awful position to be in and I think we are just trying to stay competitive while shuffling the cap and hoping to catch lightning in a bottle at some point.
Talking heads. I saw a power ranking after the draft too. It means nothing.
Eagles and 49ers are easy picks. Lions didn't even make the playoffs last year and are missing their top WR for half the season. Cowboys? Well we will see how creatively they can screw up the season again. Seahawks are still living off past glory. That team needs a reset.
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