Because the topic has come up
With this being the long, dark tea time of the offseason in the National Football League, we’re looking for nearly anything we can to potentially spark debate about the Minnesota Vikings. Thanks to the folks at Bleacher Report, we have a topic for such a thing.
BR put together a list of what they feel is the worst trade each team in the NFL has made in the last 10 years. For the Vikings, they chose the trade the team made for quarterback Sam Bradford before the start of the 2016 season.
Now, in hindsight, sure. . .it might not have been a great trade. But at the time, Rick Spielman didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. He had a team that was expected to compete in the NFC, had just lost their starting quarterback to a horrendous freak injury, and was staring down the barrel of potentially starting Shaun Hill for 16 games. That sort of context is important when looking at trades.
Plus, it’s not as if Bradford was actively awful or anything. He spent that 2016 season behind an offensive line that was pulling guys off of their couches to start games and, in a development that was pretty miraculous given Bradford’s injury history, started all 15 of the Vikings’ games after Hill started the opener. Plus, if you go back to the 2017 season opener, he looked downright magical and appeared poised to lead the team on a real run.
Honestly, there are several significantly worse trades over the past decade from this team that I can think of. Here are a couple of examples.
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s first-ever draft trade (2022)
We all remember this one. The Vikings were poised to pick at #12 in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft, and rather than make a pick, they made a trade with their division rivals from Detroit to move all the way down to #32. Compounding the problem was the fact that the player they selected at #32, safety Lewis Cine, played just four games as a rookie because of a nasty leg injury and never found a spot with the Vikings, getting waived after just two seasons.
The Yannick Ngakoue trade(s) (2020)
The Vikings needed some pass rush help ahead of the 2021 season, so they made a deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars to acquire Yannick Ngakoue, who had averaged about nine sacks a year over his first four seasons. The Vikings gave up a second-round pick and a conditional fifth-round pick to acquire Ngakoue’s services. Ngakoue then proceeded to put up five sacks in his first six games in a Vikings uniform.
Then. . .for whatever reason. . .the Vikings decided to trade Ngakoue to the Baltimore Ravens for a third-round pick and a conditional fifth-round pick the next season. So, they lost ground in the draft for the privilege of having Ngakoue in uniform for six games. Sadder still is the fact that the five sacks that Ngakoue picked up in the first six weeks of that season were still enough to lead the 2020 Vikings in that category.
The Kaare Vedvik trade (2019)
Veteran kicker Dan Bailey was coming off a fairly awful 2018 season, so the Vikings thought they’d bring in some competition for him. Usually, when teams bring in competition for a kicker, they grab someone off the street or something. Instead, the Vikings decided to send a fifth-round pick to the Ravens in exchange for Vedvik, who had done both kicking and punting during the preseason for Baltimore. Vedvik had gone 4-for-4 on field goal attempts, including a 55-yarder, in Baltimore’s first preseason game, and the Vikings made the trade a few days later.
Vedvik wound up being in Minnesota for a little less than three weeks, as Bailey ultimately won the job. So, not only did the Vikings burn a draft choice to acquire a kicker, they did so to acquire a kicker who never even suited up for them in the regular season. Woof.
Those are some of the actual worst trades the Vikings have made over the last decade. Which one do you think was the most egregious?