“Trader” Rick Spielman was in full wheel-and-deal mode on Saturday, as the Vikings traded back a few times to stockpile extra picks. Despite some moaning on the part of the fan base, this is something he’s been remarkably consistent about — he likes to have about ten picks in a given draft. He’ll move up to get a particular player (like Harrison Smith in 2012, Cordarrelle Patterson in 2013, and Teddy Bridgewater this year), but in general he prefers to trade down to get more opportunities to draft players for the long term. There was a particularly persuasive article about this at Vox.com a few days back, arguing that teams should always try to maximize the number of players they draft, to increase their chance of getting players who will be around for a long time in the league:
Draft picks can be traded, and the success of any one player picked is highly uncertain. Because of that, their data says that in the current trade market, teams are always better off trading down — that is, trading one high pick for multiple lower ones — but many teams become overconfident in their evaluation of one particular player and do the exact opposite: package several low picks for the right to take one player very early.
“There are one or two teams out there that philosophically follow this idea,” says Massey, who serves as a draft consultant with several NFL teams that he can’t disclose. “But in my experience, teams always say they’re on board with it in January. Then when April rolls around, and they’ve been preparing for the draft for a long time, they fall in love with players, get more and more confident in their analysis, and fall back into the same patterns.”
My only disagreement with this argument is that due to the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, there’s a discontinuity in the data at the bottom of the first round: teams get an optional fifth year on contracts with first round players. For this reason, I think Minnesota was right to trade up to get Bridgewater at the bottom of the first round, to get that option instead of waiting until they were next on the clock (which would have been eight picks later in the second round).
At the Daily Norseman, KJ Segall looks at the draft philosophy being employed by Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer:
As we agonized through the pre-draft build up, I contemplated the basic two directions the Vikings could go — solving the offense with relatively few moves, or focusing on a defense that had holes everywhere. On one hand, we needed three things to have an offense worthy of contending in the NFC North: a good quarterback, a good offensive guard, and a reliable backup running back. (Not bad when one of the things you need is a backup position.) If we fixed that, then our solid WR corps, strong Oline, and superstar RB would be giving opposing DCs nightmares… but, that would also mean that our defense would have missed out on some upgrades, and many a team might simply outscore us no matter what we could do with the ball. On the other hand, letting the offense be with the adequate Matt Cassel, Charlie Johnson, and (fill-in-the-blank backup running back), all while attempting to plug as many holes on the leaky longship that was our defense could create a relatively well-balanced team that might not scare a lot of people but could still sneak out some surprises.
So it came down to this — be mediocre across the board, or be great at one thing and weak at another. Ultimately, through FA and what has been a shockingly good draft (shockingly because when you get the hands-down best QB available at freakin’ pick 32… well, the mind, it gets blown), they basically have gone with the latter. Yes, we solved our quarterback situation beyond our wildest expectations, and our offense will in fact be much, much better this year (and it wasn’t even all that terrible last year, either). And yes, by drafting Daddy David Yankey and Jerick McKinnon, we did technically solve those other two holes- although McKinnon is most definitely a project at first, and Yankey’s ability to unseat Charlie Johnson yet remains to be seen. (Although he should hopefully do so at some point in the season.) In reality, we focused pretty heavily on defense throughout the draft, starting off with the selection of Anthony Barr. The Bridgewater awesomeness aside, it would appear that the Vikings were determined to work on the defensive upgrades made in free agency as their primary focus.
On to the actual day three picks below the fold.
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