Friday Mailbag: A draft, a new horizon

The Vikings drafted and have a GM search on the way and fans have questions

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Friday, everyone! We have a draft in the books and a GM search ongoing. Lots to get to….

Matthew B… The draft pick that confuses me the most is the Tiernan in the 3rd round. Why take a backup Guard/Tackle prospect when starting-level Centers were available? I support getting more OL help, but I feel like backups could have been found later in the draft.

There is definitely a straight forward, “they stuck to their board” answer. We all love Best Player Available until it doesn’t fit a position group that we think we need, then they are crazy.

The short and long-term benefits are definitely there. For next year, if Brian O’Neill or Christian Darrisaw (or both) get hurt, they will have a developed swing tackle in Ryan Van Demark and developing young tackle in Tiernan to keep the train on the tracks while the starters are out. They also have very little in terms of guard depth right now. Considering offenses rarely ever play an entire season without someone getting banged up, I’ve come to feel like teams need seven offensive linemen who can legitimately start to get through a season.

In terms of the long term view, Brian O’Neill is a free agent after this year. Will Fries is owed $10 million if he’s on the roster on the third day of the league year in March and it’s not clear whether Darrisaw is going to be a 17-game guy going forward. The knee injury might end up never really going away. That happened with David Bakhtiari in Green Bay. He was able to play 11 or 12 games at a high level but he couldn’t get through full seasons late in his career. Hopefully that’s not the case. Gotta prepare for it though when the position is that hard to replace.

The player also has a lot to like. Top notch pass blocking by PFF the last two years with legit left tackle height and weight. If he had a little more length I’m sure he would have been taken much higher.

I’m good with the idea of taking a quality football player and figuring it out later.

Jake J… Where does Rob B rank in hierarchy within the organization with his current title (not the interim GM)? Would getting the GM be considered a major promotion?

The GM job is a major promotion, yeah. He’s obviously very high ranking already to be taking over the gig during this time but the GM job is running the entire building and having (presumably) final say on every roster decision. The GM also manages way more than just roster decisions. They choose the front office that they want and have their hands in pretty much every element of what goes on inside TCO Performance Center.

That’s why everybody who thinks that they could be a great general manager in the NFL would probably actually not be a great general manager. It’s truly managing dozens and dozens of people and juggling so many people’s interests and opinions while also taking all the scrutiny. If it was only as easy as building a team on Madden, a lot more people could do it.

Evan… Vikings: we aren’t releasing the GM candidates
Adam Schefter 15 mins later: Rob wants the job

In all seriousness, is it possible Rob gets the job and does take a completely different approach instead of “stay the course”? For example, we’ve pushed money down the road for years now and when Rob sat in the GM seat, he said we’re not going to keep doing that. Is it possible there *is* a paradigm shift because Rob has been here for 20 years and is aware that the same thing hasn’t been working and there is some FO overhaul with new guys and new, different ideas?

How many different approaches can there really be if the Wilfs won’t let the Vikings tank? I always felt like the bad decisions in 2023 after Kirk tore his Achilles came from ownership, not the GM. At that point, what GM wouldn’t want to sell and get the highest draft pick possible? I just want a GM who doesn’t have their hands tied by ownership

Is it possible? Yes.

A lot of the bad decisions that they made in both the Spielman and KAM era were when the team started to feel the “win now” pressure. The 2020-2021 decision(s) to extend Kirk and keep trying to hang onto every last ounce of the 2017 team that they could rather than just letting go and forging a new plan was an egregious misjudgment but you are probably correct in thinking that a lot of the moves that went sideways (hey Kaare Vedvick!) were driven by desperation to reach the unobtainable bar of winning every year. It’s probably not a coincidence that Rick handled things smartly when they were in building mode in 2014 and 2015.

At the same time, no excuses. They own the team and they set out the parameters. There are plenty of teams who do not tank that find ways to stay competitive while also building into the future. Just because it’s tougher than going all the way to the bottom doesn’t mean it’s impossible. The Seahawks were not tankers, they just happened to make a great decision at the right time to trade Russ Wilson that ultimately led them to the Super Bowl.

You can get an edge by making good money decisions, stockpiling draft capital, playing free agency and the trade market cleverly (see the DeMarcus Lawrence and Leonard Williams acquisitions).

This is where I think Rob could do a really good job. He made it clear from the handling of this offseason that he was not going to sacrifice the future for a big one-year play. That’s the type of approach they need. Make smart decisions over and over and over and you’ll give yourself a chance.

Matt D… Do you have a high level breakdown of the actual roster impact that a Greenard extension would’ve had? Whenever this kind of thing comes up, it feels like everybody just points to the overthecap number and declares that they either did or didn’t have enough money to keep the player around. I know it’s tough to nail down with all the void years and other levers you can pull, but assuming they handed out normal contracts to players, what did this trade actually buy them cap wise? The ability to extend both O’Neill and Addison? A mid range Kyler contract? Juaun Jennings and a bag of footballs?

I don’t know exactly what the extension would have looked like if the Vikings had done it. The Eagles’ extension for JG had a bunch of void years on it and lowered his cap hit a lot in the short term. As always, you can do anything you want in the NFL in the short term but it might have a big long-term sacrifice.

So they could have done it if they really, really wanted to. At the end of the day, they just thought it was better to let him get $50 million locked in with another team and give Dallas Turner a run at that position.

But not doing it opens up $34 million in cap space over two years. That could certainly go toward free agents right now or after June 1 when some more cap space opens up from the Jonathan Allen offset with Cincinnati signing him. It could play into future free agents that they sign in 2027 or give them more flexibility to sign Kyler Murray to a mid-level, Daniel Jones-type deal.

Not only is it $34 million in space for the next two years, it’s also not having whatever deal cap space down the road that it would have taken to make the deal work and lower the cap hit in the short term.

It’s a tough trade to make because Greenard is awesome but the benefits are pretty easy to see.

Jared M…Getting defensive draft picks to fit Flores’ system makes sense. But Flores was in high demand for head coaching jobs at the end of this season. With the likelihood of Flores leaving after this season or the next seemingly pretty high, isn’t it dangerous to draft for Flores’ system long term? How would the Vikings deal with that? Are the players versatile enough to fit any scheme? Would the Vikings hire someone in Flores’ mold who could craft a defense so that these new players still fit the scheme for which they were drafted?

Is the likelihood of Flores leaving after this year or next year high? It’s pretty clear that the NFL is not making him a head coach again. It’s possible that if the Vikings reach the Super Bowl that somebody could say “screw it” and hire him anyway but it doesn’t seem like that’s around the corner. If it hasn’t happened after three fantastic years of squeezing the absolute maximum out of these defenses, why will it happen next year?

I can’t think of a better place for Flores to work. He’s at the top of the pay scale in the entire league, he has control of the defense to do it his way and he’s working for an ownership that will invest whatever it takes financially.

The reason that teams make win-now decisions in the draft is because they don’t think they’re going to have multiple years to work with, so they pick players that they think can save their bacon right away. It doesn’t always work. So it’s a better philosophy to assume there’s going to be a multi-year process to develop Caleb Banks and Jake Golday into long-term players than to just take whatever guy you think could start Day 1.

With your scenario though, I don’t think it takes a mega genius to see a path for any of these guys. Caleb Banks is 6-foot-6, 330 pounds and runs a 5.0 40-yard dash. That’ll play in any defense if he’s good.

It’s an interesting thought though. Ideally you’d want to be scheme agnostic and pick the most talent and have the coaches make it work. At the same time, scheme fit has been absolutely everything in this Flores defense. It’s a place where Eric Wilson goes from special teamer to downright star. That doesn’t happen too often.

Brent O… Has there been any conversation about why they didn’t try (or maybe the did) to trade back in the first? I don’t hate the Banks pick, but with how everyone is talking about it, seems like there were options to get him later in the first round, and there were plenty of teams looking to move up. An extra pick seems like it would have been helpful for getting a WR or C earlier. Or did they feel like other teams were actually contemplating him in that range?

I haven’t really talked about the trade-back possibilities because I have no way of knowing what their opportunities really were. I don’t have the phones tapped and I haven’t heard anyone say that they had teams ringing the phones with deals.

If they had a chance to move back and get a good offer, they might have either still been able to get Banks or grab some quality talent later. That’s where it’s tough. The guys who were taken in the mid-to-late 20s are not considered to have Banks’ upside.

It’s definitely interesting to think about if they moved back two spots with Pittsburgh and got an extra fourth-round pick and allowed them to take Makai Lemon and then the Vikings nabbed someone like Skyler Bell (on the board when the Steelers picked in the fourth) how that would have played out.

I’m perfectly OK with a straight forward draft where they don’t try to play crazy trade games and just pick a bunch of dudes that they all agree on as an organization. Maybe there were more hack-the-draft opportunities left on the table though. It’s really hard to say. That’s why evaluating the draft is so tough.

Now that we’re done with this process and have the results, if we were doing an alternate universe draft, here’s who I would have taken that was on the board when they picked if I can’t take any guys the Vikings selected…

Makai Lemon, D’Angelo Ponds (no trade back), Jaishawn Barham, Darrell Jackson, Jonah Coleman, Jalon Kilgore, Cyrus Allen, Skyler Gill-Howard, Cole Wisniewski.

(For the record, I’m all in on the Jake Golday, Chuck Demmings, Max Bredeson and Demond Claiborne picks).

Dermo Man… Did you see Eric Edholm on nfl.com has released his post draft power rankings. Has the Vikings at 28, behind Titans, Giants and Browns. I think you’ve had him on before , would be good to get his full breakdown, sometimes differing views bring good perspectives.

Yep, I’ve been friends with Eric for a long time. He was awesome to me well before I was established with the beat and I’ve read his work forever. Great guy.

In terms of the draft rankings and grades, I’ve got some analysts scheduled to come on the show and I can get Eric to drop by too…

My theory about the draft grades is that the first-round pick weighs extremely heavily when it comes to these evaluations, so if the outside world thinks they reached big time on a player like Banks, then they aren’t likely to get a ton of credit for the Chuck Demmings pick.

Not only are the grades about the Banks “reach,” but also that the Vikings’ draft simply turned out differently than most of the analysts projected it. I think that always ends up turning into bad grades. They expected a safety higher, a center, a wide receiver and that didn’t happen.

Every analyst should give their opinion on each team’s draft. They spend all this time working on it, so they’ve earned the right to put their takeaways on paper. But we need to keep in mind that there is no evidence that draft grades or order have anything to do with future outcomes.

JeffInSeattle… I look at the Banks pick as the Vikings getting drunk & doing something stupid. It’s likely to be a bust and if it works out, it’s purely accidental. As far as the rest, I’m sure a few will develop into major contenders, but it’s ST help & depth for this year. If this is how it works out, it’s a successful draft.

I wouldn’t call drafting a 6-foot-6, 330-pound dude with one of the most impressive athletic profiles we’ve ever seen at the position “accidental.” I’d just say that the risk quotient is higher with him than a lot of other guys they could have selected.

With the rest of the draft, it’s definitely not hard to see how these guys could work out. Golday’s worst-case scenario is him turning into a normal linebacker. Orange should be able to step into his role quickly and handle 350-500 snaps. Bredeson is another one where it’s very likely to click and have an impact, even if there isn’t superstar potential.

You’re always aiming for 2015 where there’s just stars everywhere but it doesn’t often go that way. Past the first two rounds, it’s generally average starters and role players.

Colin O… Most of the draft analysts have talked/ written only about the shortened 2025 season for Banks, but it seems concerning he didn’t get more run earlier in his career? Do we have any evidence that “breakout age” applies to other positions, not just WR?

The study that was done on how long it takes each position to succeed is now pretty old, so I’m not sure if the numbers are still the same but defensive tackle was generally a position that took two or three years for guys to start reaching their peak. With Banks, you could see it going either way. He has the physical traits to succeed faster than most players because most DTs weigh 295 pounds not 330. But his lack of playing experience and major setback in 2025 might also mean that it’s going to take longer than that for him to master a lot of the technical stuff that he got behind on.

People don’t always realize how much technique and football IQ is involved at DT. Identifying offenses’ tendencies is a key to getting off the ball quickly. So it’s going to take a lot of teaching and learning. With a guy like this, I imagine the investment in his success will be very high.

Garrett K… I don’t want to sound flippant or disrespectful, more looking for what he does, but what makes Robbie Breeze good at his job as salary cap expert? Intimate knowledge of the complicated rules? Creativity in contracts? Interpersonal skills with agents and players?

I know that we all have OverTheCap.com now so we think that we could all manage the salary cap just as well as Rob but I promise you that’s not the case.

You touched on a lot of things there that would make him exceptional. This is the guy who negotiates the deals so there’s a ton of fine details that have to be worked out in every one of them. He has to be incredibly detailed in his work and also be able to work through snags in order to get contracts done with a lot of time pressure on him.

Rzuppelli…This is more of a question for Mr Sirles, given his agent background, but I’ll ask here anyways.

How do agents/players view it when a team is willing to trade a guy who wants a raise to somewhere that will pay them vs the team taking a hard line? Do they care?

Do you mean: Do the Vikings earn goodwill by making moves like this that ultimately make the player happy?

I’m sure that agents most appreciate when the team works through things in a fair way. With Jonathan Greenard, he was out of guaranteed money. It’s not just that he wanted a raise, it’s that most players do not want to play a single snap with zero guarantees left on their deal. Teams set up these contracts to be renegotiated with two years left. While they could have played hardball and let him sit out the entire training camp or whatever, it was just better to call it a day now. That worked for everyone.

Brad… How long do you think it will take Kyler to look comfortable running the show? It took Darnold a few weeks before the playbook seemed like it was really opened up, but as you say Kyler has been working with similar concepts in Arizona.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to take Kyler very long. He’s been a starting quarterback this entire time and he’s been forced to learn a new offense recently, so I’m sure that he’s going to be ready to roll pretty early in camp.

As we’ve learned from the past, training camp can be a tough thing to judge. I’m sure we’ll be out there counting completions and incompletions all summer long but this is a guy whose M.O. is being a baller. That might make it a little harder to know how far along he is. Usually when QBs take off in camp, it’s kind of a bad sign. Not with this fellow.

Gary A… We have a few days left to kibitz about the draft. All oft he why did we pick X, why didn’t we pick Y, and why didn’t we pick a safety/center/wide receiver? But soon enough, it’s all about the players we have and getting them to gel into a team. A big issue last season was the surprising number of dropped balls by our WRs. The constant changing of QBs was an issue. So was the velocity JJ could put on a short pass. But there were too many just plain drops. How do the coaches go after this? When teams fumble, the coaches add a lot of practice with the defense trying to knock the ball out. Do they do the same with catching the ball? Maybe the Vikings need to change the brand of glue our receivers use?

Coaches are not trying to teach Justin Jefferson or Jordan Addison how to catch the ball.

Actually when you look at the percentages, Jefferson’s drops weren’t any higher or lower than previous years. It was more about perception because it was such a struggle to get him the ball that when he dropped it, it was incredibly deflating. Addison’s drop rate was much higher and he had some shocking ones.

Even if we look at the year-to-year data with the best receivers, there isn’t much rhyme or reason to drops. I think we can pretty safely say that the combination of velocity and poor timing made things a lot harder on the receivers and then it started to get into their heads a bit. Receivers like to get into a rhythm and when it felt like they weren’t getting accurate passes very often, it probably impacted them.

Here’s what you’re going to learn about Kyler Murray: He’s incredibly accurate and throws an extremely catchable ball. DeAndre Hopkins dropped 4 passes the entire time he was an Arizona Cardinal.

KellyJ…. I think the timing for a WR like Jennings may play a role. The Vikings get another $11.2M in cap space on June 2nd due to post June 1 designation for J Allen. They get up to another $12M plus in 2027 cap space due to offset language from Hargrave and Allen combined. Given this, I think my preference is a bigger swing for Jennings which is also a hedge for Addison, just in case he has another brain fart. Thoughts?

If they gave a pretty big contract to Jennings — a listener suggested 3 years, $45 million — I’d be perfectly fine with that. He’s a proven player in an offense with some similarities and he’s tough with size and can play WR2 if they need him to do that. He could be very valuable for them and there’s nobody else in free agency that even comes close. I’d say it would be a good investment, regardless of the Addison situation.

Eldon… Do you think we see a major shake up in the scouting department after the new GM is hired?

If I had to guess, I’d say no. It seems like the Wilfs really like this group inside the front office and believe in them. So I expect them to hire Rob Brzezinski or someone else and stick with most of the department.

But I’m of the opinion that they should either roll with this direction or completely overhaul the thing and let the new GM pick all of their own folks. Either stay the course or completely shift gears. No half measure.