Vikings draft rewatch: The missed pick
Watching the ESPN broadcast of the 2003 draft back
By Matthew Coller
Inspired by former PFF’er and current host of the Check The Mic podcast Steve Palazzolo’s Twitter/X threads rewatching old NFL Drafts, I decided to do a series on the Vikings’ most memorable drafts of the last 25 years. We begin with 2003: The Missed Pick.
ESPN’s coverage of the 2003 Draft at The Theater inside Madison Square Garden opens with the camera panning the crowd as Chris Berman sets the stage. The first jersey that’s visible in the crowd is a Buffalo Bills No. 11 Drew Bledsoe. Berman touts the fact that there are fans from every team in the NFL in attendance. By today’s standard in which the NFL has turned the draft into a massive party that draws between 250,000 and 550,000 people, it’s strange to see a small room of cheering faithful. Back then you had to be pretty wacky to travel across the country to watch names being read off by the commissioner.
The broadcast then swoops over to the tables of the projected top picks. Carson Palmer is expected to go No. 1 overall after a prolific USC career. Former Viking Terence Newman is there along with Penn State defensive tackle Jimmy Kennedy, Terrell Suggs and Byron Leftwich. Berman makes a comparison between the loaded QB draft of Palmer, Leftwich, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman and Chris Simms to the famed 1983 draft that featured John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly.
“We could have five quarterbacks in the first round,” Berman says.
Close. There were four taken.
Before they start diving into the analysis there is a brief celebration of Mel Kiper Jr.’s 20th year on draft coverage. At that point, ESPN probably couldn’t believe how far the draft had come since Kiper Jr. first appeared on TV. I’m sure Mel never expected there to be 50,000 Mels running around 20 years later. Chris Mortensen and former Minnesota Vikings head coach Dennis Green are also on the broadcast. Berman jokes about Denny drafting Randy Moss before they get going.
The first discussion on the docket is about the New York Jets trading the 13th and 22nd picks to the Bears for the No. 4 overall pick with the expectation that they are going to draft a defensive tackle named Dewayne Robertson.
“They are talking about this guy like he’s Reggie White, Lawrence Taylor and Bruce Smith rolled into one, is that fair?” Berman says.
Robertson would end up going to the Jets with their pick and playing from 2003 to 2008 and racking up 16.0 sacks. Twenty years ago, teams used to make wild trades to get their guy much more often than they do now. By the analytical draft value chart on OverTheCap.com, the Jets received a pick worth 2443 points and gave up 3134 points. Sufficed to say nobody in today’s game would be making that move.
Kiper Jr. notes that Robertson’s workout is what shot him up into the top five, not his production. That still happens now but we have all come to understand that Danielle Hunters are rare. The panel agrees that picking Robertson is an imitation of the Super Bowl champion Bucs, who were driven by Warren Sapp. That sounds familiar, aye?
Commissioner Paul Tagliabue takes the stage to welcome us to the draft. He gets cheers from the crowd. I wonder what year fans started booing Roger Goodell and why they did that.
The Bengals draw boos from the crowd when the commish announces that they are on the clock.
“Is there any question here?”
“No,” Kiper Jr. says.
About 30 seconds later, Tagliabue is announcing Palmer’s name. These days we still talk about well-run franchises and franchises with poor leadership but the NFL has advanced massively in the quality of clubs from those days. Now when a really bad team drafts a No. 1 quarterback like the Bengals did in 2020 with Joe Burrow, the expectation is that the quarterback will simply turn them into a premier franchise within a few years if he’s good. The Bengals were terrible and cheap before Burrow and now he forces them to keep their best receivers on massive contracts. The Bills were down bad before Josh Allen and now they reach the AFC Championship every other year. But in 2003, it was harder to escape being cheap and bad, especially when you had to give the QB a massive contract right away. Berman mentions that the Bengals already worked out a six-year, $49 million deal with Palmer.
“You have a chance to say, ‘I was a cornerstone in turning around the Cincinnati Bengals,’” Berman says.
Of course, Palmer did turn them around for a minute but the Bengals ultimately frustrated the No. 1 pick to the point where he forced a trade to the Raiders.
In my memory, Palmer was a no-doubt, can’t-miss prospect because his 2002 college season was legendary. Kiper Jr. reminds the audience that Palmer went into the year with a second-round projection because he didn’t have a great 2001 season. He was much more of a one-year wonder than I thought. The highlights draw Drew Bledsoe and Troy Aikman comparisons from the panel.
Chris Fowler interviews an uncomfortable Palmer, who seems to be aware that he isn’t going to start right away with Jon Kitna there but doesn’t want to say it.
We move on to the No. 2 overall pick held by the Detroit Lions. Another pick that was seemingly lacking in drama. Berman declares that they have to pick Michigan State receiver Charles Rogers and moments later they do just that. This was the beginning of Matt Millen botching receiver draft picks. Rodgers had an incredible 2022 season, winning the Biletnikoff Award, racking up 1,351 yards and 13 touchdowns, both of which led the nation.
“You look at his size, leaping ability and speed, he has it all,” Kiper Jr. says. “He has to set his mind to being a great player.”
A prescient comment. Rogers finished his career 36 career receptions. There is a pretty good argument to be made that Millen was more unlucky than stupid when it came to picking these receivers high in the draft.
Fowler asks Rogers about a diluted urine sample that was flagged by the NFL at the Combine, asking him if he ever used drugs. The receiver insists that he would never make a mistake like that with so much on the line. However, he would end up getting suspended in 2005 for violating the substance abuse policy. That was the last he played in the NFL. Rogers would go on to struggle with substance abuse and pass away of liver failure in 2019.
A Miami kid wearing an Orlando Magic jersey to the draft appears to be the logical next pick for the Houston Texans. The broadcast runs a fan internet poll across the bottom of the screen asking, “who will have more yards as a rookie, Charles Rogers or Andre Johnson?”
The Texans were only entering their second year of existence. They won four games with David Carr, who got sacked an ungodly amount of times. The discussion over whether they should pick Johnson or a blocker doesn’t last very long as the Texans seemingly ran the pick into the commissioner. We are just 24 minutes into the broadcast and three picks are in. If only things still worked at this pace.
Kiper Jr. mentions Johnson running a 4.38 40-yard dash at 230 pounds. His highlight reel looks like Derrick Henry playing receiver.
“These guys represent the new type of receiver that are big and can really run, they can go down the field and make plays and go across the middle and what it shows you with two receivers in the first three picks is that the receivers mean a lot and the offenses mean a lot, and that’s the new NFL,” Green says.
Berman wonders if Rogers and Johnson will end up being compared to the 1988 draft with Tim Brown, Sterling Sharpe and Michael Irvin.
With the No. 4 pick, the Jets, as expected, take Robertson. The Bears ended up taking DE Michael Haynes and QB Rex Grossman with the two selections. Call it a wash of a trade.
The Cowboys are up next. Bill Parcells and Jerry Jones are shown together in the draft room preparing to make their selection. This pick would set off a longtime relationship that would eventually impact the Vikings positively. The Cowboys go with cornerback Terence Newman, who would start his work with young defensive backs coach Mike Zimmer in Dallas. Eventually Newman would end up in Cincinnati when Zimmer was a DC and play an enormous role in the Vikings’ run to the NFC Championship in 2017 as a veteran leader on defense.
We think of Newman as the old man in the room but when he was coming out in the draft, he was considered an athletic specimen.
“You look at Newman as a player and the versatility he brings, he did a great job in the return game both with punts and kickoff, played on the offensive side of the ball and caught touchdown passes, I think he’s in the Champ Bailey mold,” Kiper Jr. said.
Many years later Newman would be asked to play nickel corner when he had never done it before and ranked as one of the best in the NFL. Newman’s pick also points to the uncertainty around injuries with the draft. Mort says that some teams were staying away from Newman because of a shoulder injury. I guess it wasn’t a big problem since he played 15 years in the league.
Kiper Jr. asks if Newman will play offense for the Cowboys. He finished his career with one carry for four yards.
One thing that is clearly noticeable is how much less conjecture and debate are on the broadcast than in recent drafts. After the Newman pick, they send it out to Jaws and crew and they do a film breakdown of how the Cowboys used some good coverage schemes that weren’t executed well and how Newman will improve in that era.
Fowler gets to Newman and points out that he was barely recruited — only by Tulsa, Kansas and K-State. Fowler asks him if he’s afraid of any receivers in the league. He says, “I’m not intimidated by anybody but fear of failure is a great motivator.” Very much like the wise Newman to drop some knowledge on us, even at a young age.
Newman finishes his interview with: “This is for Mel Kiper Jr.: There is nothing wrong with my shoulder.”
Onto the No. 6 pick. In between there’s an ad for the greatest Madden video game ever made, Madden 04. Remember when EA used to try?
The Vikings are allegedly only one pick away. There is a ton of talent on the board.
Green goes off about Terrell Suggs. “He had 24 sacks, what more do you want from a football player?”
The broadcast shows Byron Leftwich patiently waiting. Since the first few picks were written in stone before the draft even began, now things get interesting. Mort thinks the Saints are going to try to trade up with the Cardinals to take cornerback Marcus Trufant.
They send it over to Mike Golic for more film breakdown. He shows highlights of Suggs sacking quarterbacks and implores the Cardinals to pick him and forget about Suggs’s slow 40 time. “There is no way the Cardinals should pass on this guy.”
The Cardinals passed on that guy. They traded out of the pick with the Saints, only they take DT Johnathan Sullivan. He played a grand total of three seasons and picked up 3.0 sacks. Suggs ended up with 139 sacks in his career. Whoops! Arizona ended up with two firsts and took WR Bryant Johnson and DE Calvin Pace. Johnson had a reasonable career with 314 catches and Pace was excellent for a long time in the NFL, just not with the Cardinals.
“Passing on Suggs is going to create a stir,” Mort says.
OK the Vikings are on the clock with the 7th overall pick.
Berman points out that three teams behind the Vikings on the board could want Leftwich, which might open up for a trade. Kiper Jr. thinks the Vikings are looking to take Kevin Williams or Trufant.
Green runs down the trade options and says, “be careful, the clock is ticking!”
The broadcast visits with Saints coach Jim Haslett, then they send it back to Jaws. The clock reaches under 4 minutes as they break down Leftwich, clearly anticipating that he will be selected soon. Jaws loves the way Leftwich goes through his reads but is concerned about his slow delivery.
Down to under three minutes on the clock.
Andrea Kramer is now sitting with a panel of star NFL players, including Bill Romanowski, Deuce McAllister, John Jensen and Viking Corey Chavous. Romanowski is unhappy with the Cardinals not picking Suggs, Jensen thinks his sacks came against poor competition.
The clock reaches 1:00.
Romanowski continues to state his case, “Suggs’s 40? If a defensive lineman is running 40 yards on a football field, something is wrong.”
20 seconds.
Back to Berman. The crowd is chanting, “10…9…8…7…6”
Berman, laughing looks to Green. “The clock is going down on the Vikings, Denny, what’s going on?”
Denny, struggling to contain his grin, says, “you gotta like seven players in all of America.”
The clock hits :00.
Without a blink, Denny says, “Vikings passed, Jaguars on the clock, who they taking, Mel?”
Kiper Jr. begins to tout Trufant again but Berman can’t just move on.
“They passed?!?!” he says exasperatedly.
Denny tries to power through with his Jags takes.
Berman, again, “They passed?!?!” He puts his head in his hands.
The rest of the desk isn’t nearly as apoplectic as Berman. The veteran ESPN host sits in awe.
Somehow ESPN had a graphic ready: “Clock runs out on Vikings.”
Berman points out that the same thing happened in 2002.
“Turn your pick in!” Green yells.
Mort suggests that they might have been working out a trade with the Jaguars.
“The card is in but whose card? The suspense is killing me,” Berman shouts. “If you’re not right Mort [about the trade] they have some explaining to do.”
Tagliabue walks to the podium.
“With the eighth selection in the 2002 draft, the Jacksonville Jaguars select Byron Leftwich.”
The broadcast goes to Leftwich giving high-fives and hugs for a moment and then shows live video of the Vikings draft part at Winter Park. There are perplexed looks everywhere. A guy in a blue shirt and backward hat stands holding his hands up in disbelief.
They get back to Leftwich and Kiper Jr. declares him one of the most accurate passers he’s seen in 20 years.
As they show Leftwich putting his Jaguars hat on, Berman screams out in horror that the Panthers have also beaten the Vikings to the next pick. Carolina shocks the panel by selecting tackle Jordan Gross. Now Mort thinks Baltimore should run up and turn in Suggs’s name before Minnesota picks him. It’s pure chaos.
“The only thing that I think for Minnesota is that they know they’re going to get Trufant and now they are going to pay him as the 11th pick instead of the seventh pick, is that possibly what they’re doing?” Berman says, exasperated.
“We’re not in the draft room, we don’t understand their rationale,” Green responds.
As Tagliabue heads to the podium, nobody knows whether Baltimore or Minnesota is picking.
“What are they doing?” the open mic catches Berman saying.
The commissioner announces that it is indeed the Vikings and the pick is Kevin Williams.
Back in Eden Prairie, fans are enraged. A teenager throws his hat. The guy in the blue shirt throws up his arms again, totally aghast.
Before the broadcast can even catch its breath, Tagliabue is at it again, this time to announce Suggs to the Ravens.
Seattle turns in their pick with Trufant before anyone can even discuss the Suggs pick.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, this is great,” Berman declares.
Finally they get a chance to break down the picks. They still can’t figure out if the Vikings just botched the entire operation or let the clock expire on purpose knowing that they could still get Williams to save money.
“We don’t talk about money at the draft,” Green says.
The panel goes back to obsessing over how stupid the top teams were for passing on Suggs. They absolutely nailed that.
Finally the broadcast gets Mike Tice on the horn. Here we go. Berman starts off asking for an explanation.
“We were on the phone with three different teams trying to trade the selection,” Tice said. “Kevin Williams is a guy that has been on our board, the guy we had earmarked the last two weeks. We felt we could move back and still get Kevin Williams. We were speaking with three teams at that time. We felt we consummated a trade with Baltimore to trade back to number 10 where felt we could still get Kevin and pick up some more picks. The card didn’t get turned in in time on Baltimore’s end I guess. We did end up with our guy Kevin Williams so we’re extremely happy about that.”
Berman is not letting him off the hook that easy. He points out that the Vikings have been late turning in the card in the last two years.
“Is that a way to get ready for the season?” Berman cracks.
“I’ll tell ya, I’ll be used to the anxiety level I guess but we felt we were approaching it the right way, we had three phones working and we couldn’t get what we felt it was worth to move back and we did agree to a deal with Baltimore and then we went to pull the trigger and… we still did get our guy,” Tice responded.
Berman goes there with the money thing.
“That wasn’t part of it,” Tice said, reiterating the story.
And then everyone moves on. Green points out that all the teams got their player.
“So you’re telling me everybody is happy?” Berman says.
Berman’s desire to dig to the bottom of what happened because it was so unusual and preposterous is commendable, if not enjoyable to rewatch. It was downright refreshing to see someone actually want to give a team a hard time because the draft has become mostly a mush fest.
“Rams, when we come back,” Berman says grinning. It seemed like he could have talked about the Vikings missing their pick all night.
The amazing part about the Vikings landing Williams is that there were five defensive tackles taken in the first round of the 2003 draft and four of them either went bust or had forgettable careers. The guy whose team couldn’t get their pick in turned out to be a five-time All-Pro and member of the All-2000s team. Williams finished with 60 sacks in Minnesota, 10.5 of which came as a rookie, and was a key player on the 2009 club that had a top-10 defense en route to the NFC Championship game. The highest single-season sack total produced by all the other DTs in the ‘03 first round was 4.0 by Robertson.
Seven picks later, the Steelers decided that they needed a long-haired safety from USC named Troy Polamalu. Later in the first round, the Bills surprised the world by taking Willis McGahee, a superstar out of Miami who had suffered a massive knee injury.
The league passed over Charles Tillman, Anquan Boldin and Osi Umenyiora, all of whom went in the second round. The Vikings landed two other quality players in EJ Henderson and Nate Burleson in the second and third. Robert Mathis was taken as an undersized rusher in the fifth. David Tyree went late in the sixth — that would turn out to be a pretty important pick for the Giants franchise.
In 2023, ESPN’s Kevin Seifert wrote a story going behind the scenes on what really happened that night. It turned out that owner Red McCombs, always trying to save a buck, had demanded that the leadership orchestrate a trade down. The bonus was about $3 million less at No. 9 as opposed to No. 7 overall.
"Ultimately, Red got what he wanted," a Vikings employee from that era told Seifert. "He got Kevin Williams at a cheaper price but we all got embarrassed."
Some other great details from the Seifert piece: At the draft party, Tice got heckled by fans who wanted Suggs. And Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome claimed that the NFL didn’t answer his phone call to complete the trade and later they added more phone lines. Nobody’s sure if that’s really true or not.
Seifert also includes a detail that the Vikings didn’t actually have their time expire in 2002, which was referenced multiple times on the broadcast. That was a different situation where Cowboys’ time ran out and the Vikings didn’t jump in front of them fast enough.
So what did we learn from this dramatic rewatch of the memorable missed pick incident?
For starters, teams used to do some crazy stuff. In a draft that had all sorts of defensive tackle talent, two teams spent first-round draft picks to trade up and get DTs — and then they missed horribly on both players as Kevin Williams sat there waiting for his name to be called.
This is an all-time great argument for the draft being random. Had the Vikings’ pick not turned out to be one of the best players at his position in history, it would have gone down as a botch job for the ages. Instead it was like slipping on a banana peel and having a bag of $100 bills break your fall.
Isn’t that what makes the NFL Draft so captivating? There are so many thoughts, opinions, emotions and twists and turns, yet we never have any idea on that night how it’s all going to turn out. Those fans at Winter Park only know that the Vikings are the laughingstock of the draft and they have no idea they just landed one of the best players in franchise history.
It makes you wonder: What strange thing is going to happen this year that has a ripple effect for many years to come or changes some franchise’s fate?
Rewatching the ‘03 draft was also a reminder of Berman’s greatness. He was unpolished, brash and blunt. While his analysts weren’t sure what to say about the debacle, he gave the most genuine reaction and then didn’t back away from asking the question — yet did it in a way in which he could still get an answer from Tice.
Following along with Berman was like being at the draft with your buddy who talks too loud in public but everybody likes him. It wasn’t smooth but it was sharp in the way he kept the broadcast on the tracks despite a complete 180 from how everyone expected it to go. He captured the madness, yet didn’t make it feel like all hell had broken loose on the set. We won’t see another host like him.
And with working phones to send in picks, we won’t see another draft like that.
In the words of Chris Berman, "that's why they play the games."
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