If you are a fan of the Purple, this past weekend was a reason to be excited. The Vikings dove headfirst into free agency like Nick Punto going into first base. They came away with a fullback (Thomas Tapeh), a safety that might not embarrass himself in stairwells (Madieu Williams) and, the biggest piece of all, wide receiver Bernard Berrian. At least on paper, Berrian makes the Vikings much more dangerous on offense; or, if you want to drop the bar lower, at least they don’t have to be ashamed of running three-receiver sets. Our only trepidation in all this — playing the role of “Vikings fan,” as we do sometimes — is that it can be somewhat misleading when your team is the big winner in a bad free agent market. This year? It is a very bad market. The Vikings had to overpay for Berrian, who is certainly an upgrade but who is also being paid No. 1 receiver money before he’s ever really been a No. 1 receiver. (Remember Denard Walker, the CB paid like a top corner who said he’s not a top corner after he signed here?) We’re not trying to ruin anybody’s good time. We’ve just had too much false hope over the Lorenzo Bromell-types to get too excited before seeing an actual on-field transformation.

Lest you think we’ve turned too cynical, however, let’s now turn our attention to the annual selection process (copyright Fran Foley) otherwise known as the NFL draft. The Vikings have to be taking a defensive end in the first round, right? (Proving we’re not too cynical, we didn’t even sneak the words “future underachiever” in there). Our best guess is they grab at least two linemen on both sides of the ball, maybe a wide receiver late and some help in the secondary.

Fasola-link! Who likes women with accents? 21 of them?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 8:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.