Vikings Must Avoid Temptation Of Selecting Workout Warriors

There are still moves to be made in free agency, but that portion of the offseason has moved to the back burner. Teams are now in the home stretch of NFL Draft preparation.

Make no mistake about it, Draft Season in the NFL is a 365-day-a-year job for the front office. The most important part of the job is often done from late August through the bowl season when scouts are assessing player performances on the field.

Don’t kid yourself. Events like the Combine and player pro days can be very important – as adjunct tools. Players who excel in their workouts can help themselves dramatically with their answers to questions and athletic performance. But the most important thing is how a player performs in games against skilled opponents.

Vikings fans have to believe that general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is smart enough to know that as he heads into his second draft with the team.

The darling of the workout season is Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson, who has impressed all observers with his athleticism, intelligence and potential.

Some of the latest mock drafts by the sharpest draft observers have Richardson going as high as the No. 3 pick. Many have become enamored with Richardson, his 6-4 1/2, 244-pound frame and his 4.43 time in the 40.

While those are great numbers, here’s the reality: Richardson completed 176 of 328 passes for 2,549 yards with 17 touchdowns and 9 interceptions for the Florida Gators. His completion percentage was 53.8 percent, and that’s not good enough.

During his workouts, Richardson looked spectacular when competing against air. During the season, when competing against a wide variety of opponents, he looked ordinary.

The point is that Adofo-Mensah would be making a mistake if he gets taken in by a player’s workout numbers. Richardson is the example we are talking about, but it holds for nearly all players at nearly all positions.

The only exception is for players who suffered significant injuries and missed the majority of their team’s games in the previous season. At that point, personnel specialists must use the previous healthy season and then factor in the workout performance.

As the draft gets closer, over-analysis becomes a huge issue. The “invented” data that goes into the drafting equation as a result of a private workout or Combine drills largely corrupts what game scouts saw during the season. This is a problem for many general managers, and the hope is that Adofo-Mensah can avoid this potential pitfall.

Basing draft decisions on Combine/workout performance is a dangerous proposition and it can lead to the end of a general manager’s tenure with his team.

Another common draft theory that is often mentioned is that teams should draft the best available player regardless of need in the early rounds. The examples that are often used is a current player like Aaron Donald of the Los Angeles Rams, or past players like Lawrence Taylor or Reggie White.

All of these dominant defenders were or are game-changing players who can turn a team around by their mere presence.

That’s great, but how often do players like this come around? They are not in every draft and a game changing pass rusher may not appear more than once every five years. We are not talking about consistent Pro Bowlers or solid contributors. We mean a player who can turn a team around by his mere presence.

Unless a player like this is on a team’s horizon, the better idea is to find a player who fills a significant need.

This is how teams get better and stay competitive on a long-term basis. Taylor had all the credentials to become the most dominating player in the game and White was nearly as dominant. Donald has made himself into that player, but he was not quite in the Taylor-White category when he was drafted with the 13^th pick in the first round of the 2014 Draft.

General managers and personnel specialists often profess that they will draft the best player available but the reality is that they will try to select the best player that fills the biggest need.

That is the smartest and best philosophy on how to succeed in the Draft.