Vikings' Best Option in Draft Not the One Team Currently is Considering

The Minnesota Vikings approach the 2011 NFL entry draft with a plethora of needs. The team currently has listed atop these needs a starting quarterback. That incorrect assessment has led the Vikings to consider which of a long list of quarterbacks with projected NFL promise, ranging from bust to spectacular, the team should select with the number twelve pick in the draft.

In 2010, with Brett Favre out with an injury and Tarvaris Jackson displaying his limited NFL capabilities, the Vikings were forced to resort to rookie quarterback-turned receiver-turned quarterback, Joe Webb. In five games for the Vikings (two of them starts), Webb completed 60 percent of his passes, threw three interceptions, and had two rushing touchdowns (zero passing touchdowns). Webb also was sacked eight times.

Sacks aside, the bulk of Webb's negative statistics (i.e, the interceptions) came in the first game in which he played meaningful minutes--a 40-14 loss to the Chicago Bears. In that game, which he entered in the second quarter after Favre was knocked out with a concussion, Webb threw two picks. He also ran one in on a nice running play that displayed his agility, athleticism, and speed, and, at times, showed a strong and fairly accurate arm.

Webb improved from there, leading Minnesota to an improbable Sunday night victory at Philadelphia. In that game, he again ran for a touchdown and otherwise protected a Minnesota offense from self-destructing. Despite a continuing porous offensive line, Webb managed to take only two sacks while throwing zero picks.

What the Vikings have in Webb is the quarterback for whom they have been searching--a strong, athletic, young player who makes good decisions and can take some pressure off of his blockers. That the team continues to pursue a quarterback in this draft suggests that the Vikings do not recognize what they already have. It also suggests that the Vikings do not realize their most glaring warts.

Despite a quick release and one of the lowest snap totals in his starting career, Favre endured 22 sacks in 2010. Jackson's and Webb's sacks brought to 36 the total number of sacks allowed by the Vikings' offensive line in 2010. That put the Vikings in the middle of the NFL pack for sacks allowed--twenty behind the league leader--but for a team with a quick-release, West Coast offense and Adrian Peterson at running back, that's nearly the same as leading the league in sacks allowed. Vikings' fans who watched Bryant McKinnie continue to spin on the left side of the line also will attest that the Vikings eluded far more sacks than they allowed, by a combination of fortune, stacking of the line, quick releases, and scrambling.

That suggests that the Vikings' greatest need in the draft is not a quarterback who will need two years to learn under the tutelage of a highly suspect new offensive coordinator, but, rather, a beast of an offensive tackle who can protect the quarterback's blind-side with little to no coaching. Such a person is available in the draft in the form of USC left tackle Tyron Smith.

Drafting Smith would allow the Vikings to shift McKinnie to the right side where his lack of agility could unimpress for several more years without the downside of numerous sacks. And Smith's addition almost certainly would permit an already capable Webb to improve even quicker.

What the Vikings most need at quarterback in 2011 is not another young arm that needs mentoring for two or three or more years before being ready to lead a team already stocked with Percy Harvin and Peterson, but a relatively stable veteran capable of stepping in if Webb falters. The Vikings will have that option in either Kevin Kolb or Donovan McNabb, if and when free agency returns to the NFL. In this year's draft, however, the clear priority is offensive line.

Up Next: Bill Musgrave?

Time for Minnesotans to Turn Tables on Vikings' Pathetic Stadium Drive

Nearly since the Metrodome first began housing the Minnesota Vikings, Lester Bagley has served as point man on the team's efforts to construct a new, billion dollar stadium. Bagley's utter fleecing of his employers over that span of time aside, the purpose of Bagley's endeavor has been to ensure that, for whichever Vikings' ownership group he has served as public-good-implications-aside mercenary, he obtained an expensive, publicly funded, retractable-roofed, luxury-box-ensconced, revenue-stream rich stadium, replete with public funding, in perpetuity--a stadium that would draw not only unrelenting revenue but also equity for the team and league.

Bagley and his minions--many of them found throughout the local media and most evidently displayed in local newscasts wondering such things as "where should the next Vikings' stadium be located?"--routinely and consistently have pointed to the end of the 2011 season as the bewitching point. That is when, we are cautioned, the Vikings will prove that they mean business, packing up their Minnesota shop and heading for the new stadium in the sky.

If not before, certainly now is the time for the good people of Minnesota to provide a counter-proposal to Bagley and his carpet-bagging cohorts. That message should read as follows:

"At the end of the scheduled 2011 NFL season, the State of Minnesota invites the Minnesota Vikings to renew their Metrodome lease. That lease will not include any of the perks that the Vikings currently enjoy to the tune of tens of millions of dollars every year, perks such as advertising, naming rights, and tax concessions. Rather, those rights will return to the operators of the Metrodome and the residents of Hennepin County and the State of Minnesota. Rent also will increase, placing the Vikings on the same footing as other tenants in the Minneapolis area. We recognize, of course, that the Vikings' ownership group might balk at this proposal and prepare for the team's departure. Should they opt to take this course, searching for a market that does not yet exist, we certainly wish them well."

The result for Minnesota will be either a far better return on a product that currently receives an unwarranted sweetheart deal or the loss of a mounting tax burden that occupies a valuable chunk of the downtown real estate. Instead of the choice falling to the people of Minnesota, the people of MInnesota ought to let the choice fall to the ownership group of the Vikings with notice clearly given that the State and local governments, not Bagley or his minions, hold the winning cards. If the Vikings wish to depart, so be it. Cheering for jerseys no longer has the broad appeal it once did.

Up Next: Fungible NFL.