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Because there isn’t a whole lot happening in the National Football League right now and the start of Training Camp. . .at least as of now. . .is still two months away, the SB Nation NFL blog family decided that they were going to do a redraft of one of the more recent NFL selection meetings.
This sounded like a lot of fun. . .until it was decided that the first year to be re-drafted would be 2017, a year in which the Minnesota Vikings did not have a first-round selection. That’s left yours truly with very little to do. There is going to be a second round of this re-draft, but we haven’t gotten to the Vikings’ pick yet.
Meanwhile, the first round is available for everyone’s viewing pleasure over at the mothership, and one thing I can tell you is that Dalvin Cook went much higher in the re-draft than he did in the actual 2017 NFL Draft. Cook wound up getting selected at #19 overall by a team that a lot of folks thought might take him at that spot in 2017, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Heading into this draft, Bucs Nation thought the team’s biggest need was at safety. Budda Baker and Malik Hooker are still on the board, but a glance at the Bucs’ depth chart and run game rankings over the past three seasons reveals that this was a wise choice by Bucs Nation. Doug Martin was solid early in his career, but started to decline after rushing for over 1,400 yards and six touchdowns in 2015. Cook, who was injured in his rookie season, had 615 yards and two touchdowns in 2018 before really hitting his stride in 2019. The Bucs, who finished the 2019 season ranked No. 24 in the league with 1,521 yards, could have used Cook’s 1,135 yards and 13 touchdowns in 2019.
Much like he was in the 2017 draft, Cook was the third running back off the board in our re-draft. In the actual draft, he was selected behind Leonard Fournette (#4) and Christian McCaffrey (#8). In the re-draft, the Jaguars took McCaffrey over Fournette at #4 and the Arizona Cardinals selected Alvin Kamara, who went in the third round of the actual draft in 2017.
When we get to the Vikings’ pick in the second round of this re-draft, we’ll put it up here and see what everyone thinks about it. We’ve still got a few selections to go until that happens, however.