Play it safe, and mind the beard!

Good morning to you all Purple People of the world! As the jet lag kicks in full-time to add misery to my Korean revision for an exam this weekend, I’m having trouble stringing sentences together in English let alone Hangul, but on I must plough despite the fact that the field that is Vikings news is as barren as Brad Childress’ cheeks.

As expected there is still plenty to discuss around the Draft, with the Vikings’ Official Blog running with one of the most talked about position from fans, that of Safety. Many of the Purple faithful rightfully feel that despite our heavy investment in this area of the team, it is still not quite up to the standard it should be. Last year we were very vulnerable to 20+ yard plays (8th worst in the league), and despite earning some praise from the coaches, safeties Madieu Williams and Tyrell Johnson are not in the eyes of many the right people for the job. Having witnessed throughout last season, our leaky secondary, I must agree that someone is needed who can really challenge the starters, but I’m also really hoping that the players we already have can do this, particularly Jamarca Sanford as there are other areas of the secondary which need more attention than Safety. Another opinion on this position comes from Strib, and my favourite troll, Judd Zulgad who says the current starting pair need to simply be more aggressive in their approach.

This is a point of view shared by Bleacher Report’s Michael Vichael who feels that CB is probably one of the most important areas that we need to improve along with Centre/Guard. His argument is that the Hutchmeister isn’t getting any younger and has shown a couple of weaknesses of late, and John Sullivan, whilst gallant in his efforts is is desperate need of competition in order to keep him on top his game. Add to that, the problems at Tackle, and he is very right to suggest we need someone else in there. In keeping with most of the mock drafts, CB is still the top pick as that is probably where we are going to get the best quality at 30th overall, but I’m with Vichael in his view that C or G need improving at some point in the Draft.

The recently renovated Viking Age blog takes a look at some recent comments by Brad Childress about both Brian Westbrook and Donovan McNabb and reading between the lines, it seems clear that we are thankfully not interested in either player, despite whatever guff may be vomiting out of the media machines. The most interesting point for me is whether we’d call D-Mac if Favre announced his retirement today… and to celebrate this I’m going to run a cheeky little poll to see what you lot would want us to do so check my sidebar if I can figure out how to embed a poll in there.

And that’s about it for today. I’m off to drink copious amounts of tea and enjoy the remainder of my walking dead state of exhaustion.

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Welcome to The Fransition Zone – Vikes tried to sign Dorsey, much ado about Chester and more mock drafts

Blimey, it’s a chilly one in London this morning, and I had the pleasure of sitting across from someone on the train who obviously didn’t realise that they could turn off the ‘tock-tock’ keypad sound from their phone! Consequently I feel like I’ve shared my commute with Woody Woodpecker.

There doesn’t seem to be much in the shape of headlines this morning, the main thing is that it’s the beginning of the period when teams can apply franchise or transition tags to free agent players. I don’t know if this period really has an official title which is why from now on, it will be referred to as The Fransition Zone.

Our main concern in The Fransition Zone should be securing the services of DE Ray Edwards who pwnd Tony Romo last month, and is a Restricted Free Agent. However it is unlikely that we will tag Chester Taylor in any way as he is an Unrestricted Free Agent and is probably going to check out his worth through other team’s offers for his services. Keeping Chester should be another priority for us, but could prove tricky, which is probably why we tried to sign Dede Dorsey . His numbers don’t tell the tale of just how valuable he is, but he can make more money at another team, and be a starting RB, so where his future lies is more up to him than to us, but I do hope he stays (for one I’ll have to replace my home jersey which bears his name). There is a more complete roundup of our Unrestricted Free Agents on The Daily Norseman if you want a more complete overview.

Another player who will be hitting Free Agency is Tavaris “T-Jack” Jackson. Jacko’s performances in Purple haven’t set the Vikings’ world alight thus far in his career, and he didn’t really have the chance last season thanks to Favre. It’s hardly surprising then, that he doesn’t really know where he’s going to be in 7 months time, but thanks to free agency looming, he doesn’t really need to worry about it. Personally I think we need to lose either Tavaris or Sage to make way for a rookie in the draft, so if a bid comes in for Jackson, we should probably let him go. If we don’t however, it won’t be the end of the world. Hopefully he’s learnt a lot from spending a season with Favre, and with little pressure on him at the moment, it could put him in a good frame of mind if/when he is called on to step up and play.

One person T-Jack could draw inspiration from is the Vikings’ new Hall of Famer, John Randle. There’s a great article from Sid Hartman on the Star Tribune today charting Randle’s rocky road to becoming a starter for the Vikes, and how he never stopped trying to make it in the NFL. I particularly love the bit about how we used to practice with a #4 dummy, thanks to our animosity towards our “current” quarterback.

There’s more mock draft goodness out there on the interweb, this time from our friends at Bleacher Report. In their opinion a new centre/guard is at the top of our list, with Colt McCoy (most American name ever?) being picked up in round 2 at Quarterback. It’s hard to get too excited about any of this though, at least until after the Combine when the team should start to make a few signals about who they might be interested in, but it’s still fun to look at who we might, but probably won’t pick.

Okay, that wraps up a quiet day in The Fransition Zone, but expect things to pick up a bit in the coming days. And now, it’s time for FAVRE WATCH, which today is brought to you by Molton Boron.

Recently The Viking Ship invited readers to write their own articles for the site, and today features Yvonne, who explains how she became a born again Favre Fan. It’s a fun read, charting how her hatred for a Green #4 eventually transformed into love for our Purple Silver Fox. And she’s right when she says “Brett made it fun to watch football again.”

And that’s it for the Watch today, but thanks again to Molton Boron for making today’s lack of news on the Old Man possible.