Rick Spielman's Draft History

One of the things the Vikings have been, IMO, VERY good at doing since the Moss debacle, is handling character issues and mentoring troubled young men, and heading off trouble before it gets out of hand. Huge kudos to the management team on that.

but a glorified personnel director who in theory is now accountable for poor personnel decisions.

I was starting to work on a similar document covering the trades, personnel changes, but I wasn’t sure if there was much interest in it. Digging up older info is harder for that category and teams go through a helluva lot of personnel acquisitions and releases, some guys only last a couple weeks!

Does Spielman call the plays? Does Spielman coach the players? Does Spielman execute the plays on the field? All Spielman can do is acquire talent, and then it’s really out of his hands.

I don’t think it was a hit piece. I think he was trying to come up with a way to grade one of the guys who presided over a 3-13 season.

I would give everyone an “F” based on performance, but this article tried to break down EXACTLY where the lapses were in the draft.

It is infinitely better than sitting around and slamming him for doing a bit of work. If he didn’t run a multivariate regression model comparing all people involved across the whole NFL then it is because in this case it simply wasn’t necessary… a simple percentage of success was all it took to identify the areas of weakness.

When he inferred the results as it applied to actual talent then he had some completely valid points.

It wasn’t necessary to provide comparative analysis because no matter who we compare against, we failed this year, and pretty much failed last year, and if you ask me, will fail next year, too.

Byakhee, I gave a qualification in the beginning that my assessments were subjective, based on where the player is now, and, in some cases (notably the O-line and secondary), the quality of the players as they’ve developed.

The standard is the Minnesota Vikings starting line up, and how well they’ve performed.

You’re absolutely right that there’s no way to quantify whether Spielman is better, or worse, than any other GM in the NFL, for two reasons. First, he wasn’t the GM, he was part of a ‘Triangle of Authority’ so full blame, or credit, doesn’t go to him alone. Second, the amount of work it would take to do all the other GM’s draft picks is kinda prohibitive for me. Believe me when I tell you, I considered it.

If you’ve read any of my other comments, you’ll see that one thing I’ve been very consistent about is that the Vikings should never, ever, let any player go unless they have someone better to replace them with. That applies to the front office and coaches, too. I don’t advocate dumping Spielman unless they get someone better lined up.

Same applies to Frazier. You got to have someone better, someone with a proven track record of building not just a winning team, but a winning dynasty.

That being said… I’m not impressed with the track record that the ‘Triangle of Authority’ has produced. A team with such a lop-sided personnel roster as the Vikings have (superstars like Peterson, Harvin, and Allen, on the one hand… and utter crap like Tyrell Johnson and Charlie Johnson, on the other), suggests that what the Vikings had in the past is a total failure. Spielman has been an integral part of that.

Drafting is only half of his track record, though. Trades and acquisitions are also part of what’s worth looking at.

At the end of the day, though, 3-13 speaks for itself. And he owns a share of it.

I do question the way these statistics were assembled and called data. Primarily averaging all draft selections by position rather than by round doesn’t make much sense. Saying his success with receivers = 22% is meaningless when your combining top round picks like Harvin with bottom rounders like Jaymar and Burton. Whenever you take someone after the 5th round and they can contribute in any meaningful way that’s a win. And with the old contact structure missing in the early rounds is far worse than even picking well (or getting lucky) in the later rounds.

What’s hilarious about all this is that in 2009 when the Vikings were winning the dominant opinion on this website was to give Childress all the credit for the Vikings great drafts. Now that we’re losing and Childress is gone those now terrible drafts are somehow Spielman’s fault.

although with out the vitriol, but the magic, 1 in 12 times, right click to fix a spelling error-redirect to SBN’s home page ate it. but yes, there is no base line to compare Spielmans draft performance to that of other GM’s so we can not say from this analysis weather he was good or bad, at least not in relation to his peers. I agree that it is wrong headed to remove 1st string players that singed else where as FA’s after all, he did still draft them and should get credit for that pick. it is also bad to grade a guy as a failure when he is not a first string due to injury, when he was 1st string prior to injury. just as it is unfair to say that the scale gives a %100 to a guy fro being 1st string, then turn around and give him a 2nd string % because that is what you think he should be? I am not Spielmans biggest fan, I will give him a chance though. again, if we are going to grade Spielman, then we need to have a league avg to grade against.

Like you, I was really unhappy with his play early on, and for a while, I thought Berger or Fusco would be better, and then suddenly he seemed to be holding his own.

So I checked his ranking amongst NFL Centers. Short of coughing up money to ESPN, the closest I’ve been able to find is that Sully is NOT in the top 15 Centers list of the NFL. The Vikings O-line ranked 28th out of 32, so I’m guessing that Sully is ranked somewhere between 16-28.

There were complaints about his size, but he’s 6’4", 301, which is about average size amongst the top-ranked Centers in the NFL. So that isn’t the issue. The Vikings just signed him to a 5-year contract, so he’s not going anywhere as long as he can perform at his current sub-average level.

I’d like to see the Vikings pick up a top-ranked Center at some point. Matty Birk was one of my favourite Vikings too.

I disagree with your Sullivan assessment. The guy has improved drastically this year and deserves a little credit for probably being the best lineman on the team (unfortunately).

Sullivan is a below-average starting Center in the NFL. He’s also a Viking for the next 5 years. There’s nothing to be done but hope he becomes better.

You know… to accept that he’s “improved drastically”, and he’s still not cracked the top 15 Centers in the NFL… wow. I hope he doesn’t have to take that report card home to Momma.

Rice should definately count, and I think you overestimate the vikes chances at signing him with the agent Rice has.

Rice counts AGAINST him at this point because the Vikings tried to play the waiting game with the contract. Now, how much of that was the rest of the management team (e.g. Rob Brzezinski) and how much was Spielman, we don’t know. But again, ‘Triange of Authority’, Spielman gets a piece of that.

He gets the kudos, and he gets the tomatoes.

The Rice issue could flip around very quickly. If Rice turns out to be injured 50% of the time over the remainder of his career, then letting him go was the right thing to do. This is one of those things that we can’t know for sure yet.

Gerhart was not the no-brainer choice in the second round. In-fact, one could argue they should have gotten Ben Tate.

At that point in the draft, Gerhart was the BPA and the Vikings operated on BPA. It gave us stars like AD and Harvin, but it sacrificed need. Now, if the Vikings had been able to pick up their ‘need’ issues out of FA, all would have been well. But they didn’t. Year after year, we watched FA and expected major moves and aquisitions that simply didn’t happen, and great players went to other teams because the Vikings either didn’t win at the negotiating table, or didn’t even try.

Triangle of Authority, a piece of that goes to Spielman. But a big slice has to go to Chilly as well, and Frazier, because they could have pushed for players to fill the holes they needed filled.

Also with Rudolph, were you honestly thinking at the time of the draft, Vikings should pick Rudolph, because I know I wasn’t.

No, I honestly wasn’t. I was pleasantly surprised, because I was well aware that K-Sauce was getting close, and I didn’t realize that Musgrave put an emphasis on 2-TE sets. Those are two personnel considerations which, knowing that, makes Rudy a more obvious choice, if he was available.

The 2011 Draft was the first NFL draft in a while where the team wasn’t drafting on BPA for rounds 1 and 2. It was a much needed change of direction.

and hire you instead? You seem to know exactly what the team needs are, and who to call an idiot, except yourself, of course. You’re an idiot.

Anybody remember a QB named JaMarcus Russell out of LSU? Drafted No.1 by the Oakland Raiders in 2007. Mel Kiper, Jr. and his hair said he was going to be the next ‘John Elway’. We all know how that turned out. I think he’s flipping burgers in a McDonald’s or living under a bridge right now.

To all potential wannabe GM’s who think they know better:

Tom Brady – drafted in the 6th round – 199th overall in the NFL 2000 draft

Brett Favre – drafted in the 2nd round – 33rd overall in the 1991 draft – 3rd QB taken. The other two taken before him? Dan McGuire, first-round draft pick (16th overall) of the Seattle Seahawks ( spent five underwhelming seasons in the NFL. Now he’s president of a vitamen water company in Reno, Nevada ), and the much ballyhooed Todd Marinovich, the all-American boy and Heisman Trophy candidate out of USC, whose poor play and addiction to drugs limited him to two seasons in the NFL.

Look, gang, THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A SURE FIRE PICK!!! Everybody got that? Good! Now cut Spielman some slack and take what we get and cross our fingers ’cause any college pick in the draft is nothing more than a crap shoot, ok?

FINALLY, DOES SINGLETARY DESERVE ANY CREDIT FOR TURNING THAT FRANCHISE AROUND?

in my opinion, no. look what he got out of those players, and look what harbaugh is getting out of them.
they are essentially the same players. i think it shows what good smart coaching can do for a team.

And see if he was overridden a lot…

Because no team is showing great success right now without a catching tight end.

Some are making the argument that he doesn’t block well, but I think that is one of the failures of the Vikings… that they are using their TE’s to block and not to actually get downfield and catch some passes and keep the other team guessing.

so, i think there is a track record to judge him by, it might not be totally clear due to the chilly factor, but chilly did not have cokmplete control of the player selection and acquisition, he had final say on the 53 guys we kept after training camp.

Then he hired freaking Fran Foley and let him and Childress ruin the 2006 draft. That was the start of the downfall of the depth on the roster and led Childress to chase many QBs trading away draft picks in the process.

I do not know why it is so hard. Childress is the person responsible for the majority of this roster. Not Spielman. I mean Childress is only a season and a half removed from the team but his fingerprints (i.e. players) are still on the roster. They will have to purge some of the players he selected.

Make no mistake. He was responsible. How can you have final say over personnel and then let someone else run the draft? Somebody please explain that logic to me please?

Quit blaming Spielman for 2006 through 2010. That was all Brad Childress. I know Childress is a good coach but his tenure is a prime example of why you do not let a coach do whatever he wants in terms of personnel when he is hired.

Suppose Frazier is let go after next season. Should Wilf allow a new coach to come in and declare that Ponder is not the answer and now has to go get another QB? And what happens in three years when that coach is possibly gone?

I know coaches like to do that and will only come to teams where they are allowed such leeway but if I am owner I am saying no freaking way.

But the number of hall of famers is not something you find out until 20-30 years down the road.

So what good would it do us know?

Marcus McCauley is the only bust in the group that Spielman has drafted.

Asher Allen was a 3rd round pick, and is playing at a level that does not deserve the “bust” moniker. If he was drafted in the 1st round, then he might be creeping up on the “bust” label, but he is not.

Cook is a good talent, and will likely be a stud CB if he can keep his nose clean… IF he can.