Murphy: The Hot Draft Time Machine
Brian Murphy writes that the Vikings got pretty nostalgic on draft night for a team looking to move forward
By Brian Murphy
OK, now what?
Now that Mike Zimmer finally has another bone-crushing safety to rebuild his sorry defense and Rick Spielman outsmarted everyone again by dealing a coveted first-round pick to stockpile lesser assets …
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
What the hell happened Thursday night? Did we fall into some time-space portal or John Cusack’s hot tub only to wake up this morning in a purple haze and remember it’s not 2015?
Isn’t Zimmer off the grid swilling Coors Light, shooting muskrats and tossing bricks of Wilf cash into the firepit of his Kentucky ranch while Spielman whitewashes history and plays footsie with Nick Saban in Alabama?
The 2022 NFL Draft was supposed to be Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s coming-out party as the Vikings’ newly sworn-in general manager. Fulfilling an oath the rising star took to spearhead Minnesota’s “competitive rebuild” as an innovative evaluator who would not be handcuffed by the tired war room thinking and regressive methods of the previous regime.
Yet here was Adofo-Mensah debuting on the main stage and channeling his inner Spielman. With Vikings fans fully liquored and burning paychecks at US Bank Stadium in hopes of cheering an impact player, Adofo-Mensah traded the No. 12 pick to the Detroit Lions for the 32nd and final choice of the first round.
He also shipped the 46th overall pick in the second round to the Vikings’ alleged division rival in exchange for the 34th and 66th overall selections.
That numerical salad added up to a very long night for befuddled and irritated fans who had to wait until almost 11 o’clock before Georgia safety Lewis Cine could bear-hug Roger Goodell in Vegas.
The crowning moment landed with the thud of a Christian Ponder deep ball.
I get it. The smartest guys in the room always win the narrative. But what about an abused fan base that deserves a little something for the effort at No. 12?
Perhaps a quarterback for 2023?
Waiting hours for the payoff felt like a groomsman trying to close on a bridesmaid at 1:48 a.m. on the matrimonial dance floor.
Trading down 20 first-round slots for more second-day picks doesn’t sound like a collaborative, cross-functional way of achieving performance optimization and customer deliverables.
But what do I know?
So, if Spielman is Sonny Corleone, who’s already been gunned down on the Vikings Circle causeway, and first-year Lions front-office consultant Chris Spielman is Michael, new to the family enterprise but with ice water in his veins, does that make Adofo-Mensah in this cinematic equation… Fredo?
Sorry, Kwesi. Nothing personal. Just business.
The verdict on Thursday’s sleight of hand will not be rendered until tonight at the earliest, when the Vikings cash in their new largesse. Or in coming Sundays, if and when those later round picks get on the field.
Of course, Adofo-Mensah deserves time and space to reshape the Vikings in his image. But this looks and smells awfully familiar for a team that cleaned house in January and hired a pair of young geniuses in Adofo-Mensah, 40, and rookie head coach Kevin O’Connell, 36.
The only thing missing was Mike Tice’s sundial to get Minnesota’s pick in on time.
I suppose there is no point in taking this all so seriously. This isn’t Week 17 or conference championship weekend. We’re talking about a glorified business meeting in April.
Fitting that, 40 years after ESPN first started televising the draft from a New York hotel ballroom as a way to fill out its new 24-hour format, it finally ended up in Las Vegas, where there are no clocks and the party never stops.
The drone flyovers of the sun-splashed Strip and Bellagio fountains provided the perfect backdrop for the NFL’s annual orgy of corporate socialism.
Goodell was booed mercilessly as usual when he emerged for his opening monologue. He was Caesar tossing fishes and loaves to the masses in a circus tent. What’s there to deride?
Well, Rog couldn’t have looked whiter summoning Ice Cube to the podium to ring in the livestock auction if he were scratching Barry Manilow’s greatest hits on a turntable.
The draft has become appointment television for a league and fan base obsessed with not letting a day go by on the calendar without totally consuming a relentless news cycle of hot-take speculation.
Sure, there are only so many communal outlets for NFL fans to fantasize, obsess and gamble their “there’s-always-next-year” passions after the season ends in mid-February.
Who wants to binge drink while following free agency over Twitter?
This is drama baked into the ultimate NFL reality TV show. Championships are determined in the snow and mud of winter. But hope is sold every spring.
Analytics gurus, grizzled scouts and player personnel mavens earn their paychecks by gambling with potential and hedging against their inevitable firings.
Meanwhile, armchair GMs pump fists and wring their hands over stats, character assessments and judgments that rarely age well in the era of instant gratification.
Bert Bell would probably think we were all speaking Martian. Y’all remember Bert, right?
The NFL’s first commissioner was co-owner of the Philadelphia Eagles when he shepherded the first draft on Feb. 8, 1936. He had the foresight to recognize this great American game for the sum-of-all-parts ethos needed to maintain competitive balance for the greater good.
“The league is no stronger than its weakest link,” Bell said during the darkest days of the Great Depression. “Every year the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
And the sun rises in the east.
That day at the Philly Ritz-Carlton, the Eagles, who finished 2-9 in 1935, drafted first overall University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger – one of the earliest Heisman Trophy winners.
Berwanger never signed with the Eagles. Probably could’ve eaten better in a breadline than working for the fledgling NFL.
Eighty-one players were selected in nine rounds that year compared to 262 in 2022. Among the four hall of famers you probably never heard of were tackle Joe Stydahar, a three-time champion with the Chicago Bears.
The wonderfully named fullback Alphonse Emil “Tuffy” Leemans, was the 18th overall pick by the New York Giants.
And some defensive end named Paul “Bear” Bryant of Alabama, who never played a down in the NFL but carved out a legacy as one of history’s greatest college coaches at his alma mater, went 31st.
These days, teams conduct mock drafts and the real deal in digital bunkers rivaling the situation room at the White House. But, as recently as the late 1950s, the NFL Draft was an exercise in Cold War subterfuge.
Scouts would sneak out of hotel ballrooms, their pockets stuffed with rolls of quarters to cold-call random players and coaches from lobby payphones to get the skinny on potential picks and their rivals’ maneuverings.
But I digress.
So here we are on Day 2 of the three-day carnival of dreams fulfilled, deferred and destroyed. Waiting for Adofo-Mensah and his army of scouts and spreadsheet crunchers to fully flex those analytical muscles and strengthen that competitive rebuild.
An ocean of tears has been spilled since the Vikings played in their last Super Bowl in 1977. Forty-five years is practically two generations. Adofo-Mensah wasn’t even a zygote when John Madden’s Raiders handed Bud Grant his fourth title game loss two weeks before Jimmy Carter took office.
You can relive it all by hopping into Cusack’s hot tub.
Don’t forget to give a nod to Zimmer and Spielman on the journey. They’ll be smiling if the joke turns out to be on all of us.
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No one writes articles like the "Murph." Well done.
I’m all for giving Kwesi time to build this thing, but wowza I just don’t get trading back 20 spots and having to give up 46 for 34 and 66. Feels eerily similar to the jags new GM getting taken advantage of by Kevin Costner in Draft Day. And to top it off had to be the Lions getting the better of us.
On the bright side, Cine seems solid and still 3 day 2 picks to go and Kwesi is a rookie so we shall see how it plays out.