{"id":14836,"date":"2012-04-29T08:15:53","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T13:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14836"},"modified":"2014-05-09T15:11:18","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T20:11:18","slug":"wrapping-up-the-vikings-draft-selections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/04\/29\/wrapping-up-the-vikings-draft-selections\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrapping up the Vikings&#8217; draft selections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px\" src=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Viking_Head.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Viking_Head\" width=\"80\" height=\"81\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-10672\" \/>As I always have said, I don&#8217;t follow college football in the slightest, so I can&#8217;t make any pontifications about the specific players chosen in the draft. I depend on folks like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/sports\/vikings\/149387405.html\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Souhan<\/a> of the Minneapolis <em>Star Tribune<\/em> to keep me up to date on who got drafted and why:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This was Spielman&#8217;s first draft as the Vikings&#8217; unquestioned personnel boss, and we can divide it into two phases:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He seemed to do well with his first four picks.\n<li>He, like everybody else who does his job, was playing Lotto after that.\n<\/ul>\n<p>Spielman landed the best offensive lineman in the draft (Kalil) after trading down a spot to pick up three extra draft choices. He traded into the first round to land the second-best safety in the draft in Notre Dame&#8217;s Harrison Smith, who by default instantly became the Vikings&#8217; best safety since Darren Sharper arrived in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>He took speedy cornerback Josh Robinson in the third round, and flashy-if-small Arkansas receiver Julius Wright with his first fourth-round pick.<\/p>\n<p>So with his first four choices, Spielman appeared to draft for both quality and need. After that, he was either displaying a keen appreciation for hidden talent, or he was throwing bent darts at a moving bull&#8217;s-eye.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As I said after the first day&#8217;s selections, Spielman made the right decisions as far as covering the positions at which the Vikings were glaringly poor last season. After that, though, my guesses weren&#8217;t as close as I&#8217;d thought they&#8217;d be. My thoughts were that a tall, speedy wide receiver was the next most urgent requirement, and they did select a receiver, but Julius Wright seems more like another Percy Harvin &mdash; not that there&#8217;d be anything wrong with cloning Harvin, but slot receiver was not a notable requirement. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d mentioned drafting another running back for depth would be a sensible move, and with the news today that Caleb King has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/local\/north\/149377545.html\" target=\"_blank\">arrested on an assault charge<\/a>, that need was probably greater than I&#8217;d thought. With Adrian Peterson still rehabbing from his ACL injury in December, Toby Gerhart will need someone behind him for change-of-pace and the odd breathing spell.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.1500espn.com\/sportswire\/Meet_the_Vikings_Class_of_2012042812\" target=\"_blank\">Here<\/a> are the players drafted:<\/p>\n<p>1. (4) Matt Kalil, LT, Southern California<br \/>\n1. (29) Harrison Smith, S, Notre Dame<br \/>\n3. (66) Josh Robinson, CB, Central Florida<br \/>\n4. (118) Jarius Wright, WR, Arkansas<br \/>\n4. (128) Rhett Ellison, TE, Southern California<br \/>\n4. (134) Greg Childs, WR, Arkansas<br \/>\n5. (139) Robert Blanton Jr., CB, Notre Dame<br \/>\n6. (175) Blair Walsh, K, Georgia<br \/>\n7. (210) Audie Cole, LB, North Carolina State<br \/>\n7. (219) Trevor Guyton, DE, California<\/p>\n<p>Once the draft was over, the team signed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/sports\/vikings\/blogs\/149389905.html\" target=\"_blank\">15 undrafted free agents<\/a>. The first time all the rookies will be on the training field together will be this coming Friday at the Vikings&#8217; rookie mini-camp.<\/p>\n<p>Here are two exhausted ESPN 1500 guys, Tom Pelissero and Judd Zulgad, discussing the Vikings&#8217; draft picks on the last day:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IZU13hgJ2x4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I always have said, I don&#8217;t follow college football in the slightest, so I can&#8217;t make any pontifications about the specific players chosen in the draft. I depend on folks like Jim Souhan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune to keep me up to date on who got drafted and why: This was Spielman&#8217;s first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[126,179,960],"class_list":["post-14836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","tag-minnesotavikings","tag-nfl","tag-nfldraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Ri","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14836"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25654,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14836\/revisions\/25654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}