Get to Know Your New Vikings

For the first year in god knows how long I’m actually happy about the picks that the Vikings made over the weekend. I didn’t want the purple to pick up Brady Quinn because the first word that pop into my head are choke artist… he’d be better suited as an Abercrombie model. Adrian Peterson is too much of a game breaker to pass up and forget all of that injury prone stuff, he’ll be healed by the time camp starts and he won’t be taking the majority of carries in the beginning. At the same time he will help Chester Taylor enough to stop him from hitting the wall as he did last year. Peterson will help sell some tickets and in turn keep games from being blacked out, so poor me can still watch the Vikes suck it up next year.

Chili and Co. also took 3 wide receivers. Sidney Rice came off the board in the second round. The second year man from South Carolina left early to support his mother who has a broken back, this is one of the few valid reasons I see for leaving college early. Williamson also came from SC and that scares a lot of people I’m more afraid of his inability to separate from the defense than anything else. Rice was also described as immature, but try picking out a better adjective for anyone who is 20 years old.

Aundrae Allison of East Carolina was picked up by the Vikings in the 5^th round and Chandler Williams of Florida International was our final pick. Williams managed to get himself suspended for 2 games while taking part in that melee with Miami, so come back in a few months to see the mug shot. The player taken shortly before Williams was QB Tyler Thigpen out of Coastal Carolina. Thigpen will probably become a practice squad guy.

Our Third round pick was spent on Fresno State CB Marcus McCauley. McCauley stuck around Fresno long enough to graduate and I respect that in a football player, it means that he is smart and not concerned with how much higher he could have been picked last year, plus he went out of his way to track down Reggie Bush when he had broken free showing that he has speed an tenacity.

Our 4^th round pick was Brian Robinson out of Texas. Robinson will rotate in and out with James and Udeze; basically his addition can only make a team that forgot what the sack was a little bit better. He only had 5 ½ last year, but was hurt for part of the season, but did have 6 career blocked kicks. The third and final defensive player taken by the Vikes was Rufus Alexander out of Oklahoma. Alexander will backup our linebackers and spend most of the season on the special teams unit. The cool thing about him is that as a junior he led the team in recorded tackles.

These players will not be the difference between a winning and losing season. Tarvaris Jackson will have a tough season adjusting to the starting job and we still have no number one receiver. People coming back from injury like Chad Greenway and Erasmus James will probably be more significant that everybody drafted but Peterson. As a Vikings fan your best bet is to look at the season as a rebuilding year.

Nobody on offense knows each other unless they're on the line. If your team can stuff the run like it did last year and learn how to pressure the quarterback we're looking at 7 wins. I'd like to see offensive strides from this team and a losing season... that way we end up with another nice draft pick the year after and a team that has had a season to adjust to each other.