Sporting News ranks Rick Spielman NFL’s third-best General Manager

Since becoming the full-time General Manager before the start of the 2012 season, Minnesota Vikings’ GM Rick Spielman has built one of the best and most talented rosters in the National Football League. He also hired Mike Zimmer, who has been rapidly ascending the NFL head coaching ranks over his four years on the Minnesota sideline.

People are, finally, starting to take notice, and Spielman is rightly starting to take his place among the NFL’s best General Managers.

Over at The Sporting News, Vinnie Iyer has ranked all of the NFL GMs, and has placed Spielman at #3 out of the 32 NFL GMs. That’s a significant jump from the Sporting News’ rankings from last year, where Spielman ranked 14th out of 32.

Spielman delivered with two big fish in 2018, landing both Cousins and Richardson in free agency. The GM keeps giving Mike Zimmer the kinds of players the coach wants for his deep attack defense, and the team slowly has converted the offense from run-heavy with Adrian Peterson to a more balanced and explosive attack. Thanks to Spielman, the Vikings are not going anywhere as a contender.

While that last sentence isn’t worded terribly well, it is obvious that the Vikings have one of the best rosters in the National Football League, and Spielman is largely the driving force behind it. Sure, he’s had a couple of misses along the way, but he’s had significantly more hits than misses over the course of his time in Minnesota.

Here’s hoping that Spielman can find his way to the top spot on this list next season. If his two big acquisitions from this offseason can help this team get to the promised land, it would be tough not to put him there.