Quote: @purplefaithful said:
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mblack said:
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MaroonBells said:
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purplefaithful said:
The Vikings are either the most stupid or the most snakebitten team in NFL when it comes to OG' since its seems like Hutchinson was here. And they had to pilfer him from Seattle.
Hard to say which. You can actually make an argument that they haven't ignored OL at all if you look at who they have (or could have) on the OL...
LT: Riley Reiff - 1st round pick and top tier free agent
LG: Ezra Cleveland - 2nd round pick, most thought would go in the first
C: Garrett Bradbury - 1st round pick, Rimington award winner
RG: Pat Elflein - 3rd round pick, Rimington award winner
RT: Brian O'Neill - 2nd round pick
Even Dozier and Samia starting shouldn't be as bad as it's been. Not sure why the team (or anyone else for that matter) would expect anything from Dozier given his pedigree, but Samia has the pedigree to be a tolerable replacement.
It might be time to start looking at guys like Cleveland Collins and/or Udoh. Could they play any worse?
So is it the coaching and development then?
Ive said the same thing...That element cant be ignored in this.
Not disagreeing but wondering - where does it fall or stem from? In the time that the Vikings have had poor OG play, there have been a bunch of different OL coaches and OCs and blocking schemes. I think the play was poor even before Zimmer, so I can't even blame him.
Drafting is a common element. Guards have not been prioritized by Spielman, especially before 2018 when he selected Elflein. He has followed with Bradbury and Cleveland, so maybe he has reformed, but from 2010-17, the only offensive lineman taken in the first 3 rounds was Matt Kalil. That's a damn long dry spell to make up for, and I think a team needs a real "pipeline" of offensive linemen developing over a period of years.
Really, this team has not prioritized offensive linemen since the Denny Green era. I think one reason is that we historically had great success getting good linemen in late rounds and even undrafted or waiver pickups with guys like Jeff Christy, Matt Birk, David Dixon. I don't know if that history influenced Spielman, but he got John Sullivan and Brandon Fusco that way, and I think that made him believe that good OL were easily found after round 4.
And a lot of teams do find OL later in the draft, but we can't seem to any more. The team gave up on both Sullivan and Fusco too soon. Sullivan should have been given a year to fully recover from his injuries. Fusco should have stayed at RG, where he was an above-average starter, but the Vikings needed a LG and moved him there, and he played worse and got hurt and came back and was still bad at LG and they released him. But he played well at RG for the 49ers and Falcons before injury ended his career.
That's one observation: the Vikings in the past decade have moved OL around too much. It hurt Fusco's play, it totally messed up TJ Clemmings, and I think 5 or 6 other players have had their development slowed by moving from one side to the other or to a different position or even switched around from game to game. It's as if the Vikings feel Joe Berger is the model for offensive linemen. Berger was a helpful player, but not every lineman can be such a utility knife, and he was also the classic jack of all trades - able to play many spots but MASTER OF NONE. Berger was competent, not excellent.
But I think it's mostly player evaluation and selection. Look at the Free Agents, not just draft picks: the most significant OL signings under Spielman were Alex Boone, Andre Smith, and Riley Reiff. Crap, crap, and competent but probably overpaid. Only one of his draft picks has really worked out so far, Brian O'Neill. Spielman or the scouting department, whoever, cannot identify talented offensive linemen. Whoever happens to be coaching them is asked to spin garbage into gold.
