One topic circulated in the Minnesota Vikings media this week and is the reclassification of each NFL Draft from the past five seasons by Pro Football Focus. That is, they pointed out the worst team draft choice since the 2017 draft.
the biggest draft mistake made by each of the 32 NFL teams in the past five years
Many in Vikingsland immediately assumed that a Laquon Treadwell would easily take the cake as the honoree in that respect, but not, instead, now third-year center Garrett Bradbury turned out to be the worst choice of Vikes.
We even covered it here.
Here’s what PFF said:
MINNESOTA VIKINGS: GARRETT BRADBURY NO. 18 IN 2019
The selection of Bradbury by the Vikings contains several errors. He torpedoed the career of Pat Elflein, whom they called on the previous year, as he was much more suited to the central position. He will also likely continue to put you in that no-man’s-land for many years.
That’s because he is good enough in the racing game not to be replaced, but a responsibility in protecting passes. He earned pass protection scores of 41.4 and 38.8 in his first two seasons. The icing on the cake is that the next two teams called up – Elgton Jenkins and Erik McCoy – are two of the best players in the NFL’s home line.
Great.
Now, as stated in the introduction, this is something that other sites have covered a lot, so the question is why we are covering a day late. The answer? Because we have some interesting insights into Bradbury’s game that might give him a little bit of a break (or at least spread the blame a little bit).
About a month ago, I contacted some current and former offensive players and coaches to get some information about Bradbury’s game. The initial reasoning behind this was that there were two schools of thought about Bradbury’s 2020.
Former NFL O-Lineman after watching the Vikings: “It’s bad. Too bad ” [Exclusive]
The first was that he was a failure. The second was that the centers take 3 to 5 seasons to develop, so it is too early to determine whether or not Bradbury was a bad choice.
The answers may surprise you.
We ended up watching a lot of Bradbury’s 2020 tapes, and the former striker said:
“I have no reason to think that Bradbury will necessarily be a failure, but he is playing very badly now. Bad footwork, no anchor on the pro pass, constantly unbalanced. The most shocking is the lack of awareness. It seems very lost in the field. When I say lousy work I also mean that they are loose. He can move his feet, but he’s taking huge steps in reach blocks and action games and doing it literally second step. It appeared repeatedly against Tampa. “
So, bad fundamentals? Check.
During our meeting (s), one of the attackers also asked who was training the Vikings’ offensive line.
“The reason I asked about Coach OL is because all OL plays like shit. They seem completely unprepared to play for me. It’s bad now, man. Too bad. I’m sure there’s a lot of talent, but it’s not showing. “
So, bad fundamentals? Check.
Bad training? Check.
This is not everything!
“Anyone who blames Kirk for what is happening is beside themselves. He had an exceptional OL when they were healthy in Washington, in addition to Spencer Long, and the OL was run by a technician in Bill Callahan. When you watched OL, things were intentional, each guy in the Vikings’ OL plays with a different technique. Sometimes, a certain guy will do a different thing to suit his skills / skill set, but here it seems that Vikings OL doesn’t even have a coach. It looks like they took a piece of paper and someone said, go ahead and find out for yourself. “
Then. Bad fundamentals? Check.
Bad training? Check.
Bad preparation? Check and kill.
Bradbury was not just a bad choice with better options after him, but from what I heard from several people inside? He never really had a chance. Who knows, he may have developed into something special elsewhere, but the Vikings’ offensive line is bad and has been bad (and getting worse) because in every possible way they have failed.
They failed to identify, design and develop talent. They failed to train them. They literally sabotaged their own line in practice, if someone in the line shouted the blitz package they saw in front of them. Do you know, something you really want your attacker to do?
This is an end-to-end systemic flaw that sums up the Zimmer era, which is why Bradbury is the right choice for the worst draft choice since 2017 in Minnesota.
Although, there is always April!
