The Vikings have the biggest draft screwup nobody talks about

[greediron]

That's a really good point that I keep forgetting about....that Donatell was our DC that year. We took 5 defensive players, all of whom were misses. I don't know the relationship he and Kwesi had, but it's common for coordinators to have a very big say in which players the GM selects.

Fitting that _onatell missed on his picks.  Probably played 20 yards off and didn't know what round we were in.

[comet52]

Though I agree it was a colossal fuckup, I also feel like I and everyone else bitched plenty about it in the aftermath but at this point we're 3.5 years removed and the grade is F and it's time to move on. The team reupped KAM so they believe in him and that's who's running it for better or worse for the foreseeable future. I personally don't get anything out of beating the dead horse endlessly.

[Knucklehead]

Yep. It was a dogshit draft. No two ways around that. Not just for passing over Hamilton to take Cine, but the fact that we had 10 picks and only Chandler and Nailor remain. We've been shutout before (2016), but not with that many picks. Thankfully, the NFL has this mulligan called free agency that gives teams a chance to cover their draft errors, and the Vikings have taken advantage of that, maybe more than any other team. Hell, they had to. 

I think a bigger screw up was Howie Roseman taking Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson. But that's been talked about plenty. Howie clearly learned from his big mistake, because they've drafted well since then. The Vikings have improved too. It's still early, but Addison, McCarthy, Turner and Donovan Jackson look like hits. Hopefully, a couple others like Jurgens, Rouse, Ward, Reichard, LDR and TID will prove worthy of their draft slots as well.

Allow me to piggyback on your post. The Vikings drafted JJ with a pick received from Buffalo in the Diggs trade. Imagine if Buffalo doesn't make that trade & instead drafts JJ to pair with Josh Allen.

[Mattyman]

2022 was kwesis first draft. On this board there were pages and pages of comprehensive plans on what kwesi should do.

No one, I mean no one predicted 2 trade downs with divisional opponents in which the Vikings got short changed in both instances.

The consensus at the time was, this makes no sense, but I'm just rube over analytical fan, what do do i know.


Imo Drafting ponder in 2011 is the most comparable example to where the internal alarm bells were going off.

To his credit kwesi has learned both in drafting and unrestricted free agency.

[bigbone62]

Kams primary job is to identify talent and aquire the best he can,  this was a huge miss.  Asst. Coaches wishes be damned,  that was a pick that needed to be made and any talk to the contrary are just excuses.  I think Kam got carried away with his new toy and made a big oversight as a result.

And im pretty sure any system can find a role for a player of Hamiltons skill.

That's simply not how it works, but also not what a GM's primary job is. Their primary job is to identify and acquire talent for the system the coaches run.  Then let coaches do their job. You don't draft a guy who isn't a fit for your system just because he's good at a position of need. 

Using your logic we could just plug and play any ole first round lineman. Ability to zone block be damned.
Be real, if they drafted him and he was ass in the Donatell system you still would have complained.

[greediron]

That's simply not how it works, but also not what a GM's primary job is. Their primary job is to identify and acquire talent for the system the coaches run.  Then let coaches do their job. You don't draft a guy who isn't a fit for your system just because he's good at a position of need. 

Using your logic we could just plug and play any ole first round lineman. Ability to zone block be damned.
Be real, if they drafted him and he was ass in the Donatell system you still would have complained.

Probably some middle ground.  Maybe he wasn't a great fit for Donatell (nobody was) but to ignore that type of talent is a miss.  It was a bad situation with a bad DC, a rookie GM and a rookie HC.  And the results are evident.

[JimmyinSD]

That's simply not how it works, but also not what a GM's primary job is. Their primary job is to identify and acquire talent for the system the coaches run.  Then let coaches do their job. You don't draft a guy who isn't a fit for your system just because he's good at a position of need. 

Using your logic we could just plug and play any ole first round lineman. Ability to zone block be damned.
Be real, if they drafted him and he was ass in the Donatell system you still would have complained.

Yes I would have,   I would have bitched at the system that can't get quality play from stud football players....Just like we all did because Donatells system sucked ass,  many here said as much when he was hired.   Which is soemthing I would have expected an NFL GM to know,  not to go throwing away a draft class trying to fix a failed system.