It’s A Winfield Payback

[Guest]

@"BarrNone55" said:
We needed a S?

Huh? We just lost our top 3 CBs, had two vet S under contract, but we needed a S?

Ok. 

Yeah I'm with Barr here that we made the two right decisions with Jefferson and Gladney. While Winfield was awesome this year, Safety was not our number 1 priority at that time because the Vikes were discussing extending Harris (trading him as well). I wanted Winfield too, but we needed WR, CB, and OL and our first 3 picks were just that.

[Guest]

@"BarrNone55" said:
We needed a S?

Huh? We just lost our top 3 CBs, had two vet S under contract, but we needed a S?

Ok. 

We had Harris on the franchise tag and there were numerous reports the Vikings might trade him for cap relief.  Even though they didn't, I don't see how we would have kept him long term.  He's likely gone as a FA now...  we definitely could have used a S as much as a CB.  I'd say our needs we're about equal there if we are planning for the future.  Heck, we could have pulled the tag on Ant and rolled his cap savings into this year if we drafted Winfield.  That probably would have been a smarter move in hindsight.

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@Wetlander said:

@"BarrNone55" said:
We needed a S?

Huh? We just lost our top 3 CBs, had two vet S under contract, but we needed a S?

Ok. 

We had Harris on the franchise tag and there were numerous reports the Vikings might trade him for cap relief.  Even though they didn't, I don't see how we would have kept him long term.  He's likely gone as a FA now...  we definitely could have used a S as much as a CB.  I'd say our needs we're about equal there if we are planning for the future.  Heck, we could have pulled the tag on Ant and rolled his cap savings into this year if we drafted Winfield.  That probably would have been a smarter move in hindsight.

Let me ask you this. Before the draft did we know who our starting safeties were? Pretty much yes. Did we know who our starting corners would be? Heck no, we didnt even know if we had any healthy and eligible corners to play. Winfield would have been a great pick for long term, but corner was a way bigger issue to immediately address

[Guest]

I realize this is 20/20 hindsight, but look at last preseason overall, and we did this:

FA: Let Rhodes, Waynes, and Alexander leave, kept Harris. 3 CBs unsigned, 1 S on Franchise tag.
Draft: Picked Gladney. (I don't think the team could "plan" getting a starting CB in round 3.)

You could argue that Winfield would have fit our draft plans fine if we had kept even 1 of the CBs - we did expect that Holton Hill and Mike Hughes would be starters. . My preference would have been to re-sign Alexander: he only got something like $4M and started this year after returning from IR in Cincinatti. I know, something turned Alexander against the team. I could also suggest that this coaching staff should have been able to "fix" Rhodes as well as the Indy staff, but maybe that's a lost cause...

Point is, a LOT of draft capital has been invested in CB, and the fact that so much of it did not become long-term Vikings (due to coaching issues and/or salary management) led to this team needing to keep investing more at the position.