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Reply to "Vikings Suck 2.0"

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The 2009 NFC title game loss, and the fallout from a disastrous 2010 season, led the Wilfs to abandon the "triangle of authority" power structure that gave Spielman, the head coach and vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski equal say over the roster. Ownership made Spielman the GM in 2012; he promised to build a contending roster with homegrown players instead of free agents, and made a habit of trading back into the first round, selecting seven players on the first night of the draft from 2012-14. Six of those players — Matt Kalil, Harrison Smith, Xavier Rhodes, Cordarrelle Patterson, Anthony Barr and Teddy Bridgewater — reached Pro Bowls in Minnesota.

But Spielman's inability to solve the Vikings' longstanding need at the quarterback position might have affected his tenure more than anything else.

He selected Christian Ponder 12th overall in 2011; Spielman boasted about how Ponder's early statistics compared favorably to passers like Eli Manning and Drew Brees, and passed on Russell Wilson (whom the Vikings coaches loved after working with him at the Senior Bowl) in the third round of the 2012 draft with Ponder on the roster. The Vikings went to the playoffs with Ponder in 2012, but the quarterback lost his starting job in 2013, as the Vikings went 5-10-1 with three starting QBs (Ponder, Matt Cassel and Josh Freeman) during Leslie Frazier's final year as head coach.

As the Vikings tried to solve their quarterback quandary with a deep study on passing prospects before the 2014 draft, they reasoned they could build a contending team in the short term without an elite quarterback.

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