Rick Spielman has gained such a reputation for wheeling and dealing on draft night that when the Vikings ended up staying put at No. 11 last night and taking CB Trae Waynes, it almost felt like a letdown.
You mean that's it? No accumulation of picks? No assets to jump back into the first round, like the Vikings have done each of the past three seasons?
But while trading is fun and can be lucrative in terms of stockpiling picks or being bold to get a star, the downsides of those types of gambles are also numerous. The Vikings gave up four draft picks in 2013 to get Cordarrelle Patterson late in the first round. He's very much a work in progress, while two of the players New England picked up in the deal were big factors in the Patriots' Super Bowl team last season. And in 2006, the Vikings traded up to get Tarvaris Jackson. We all know how that worked out.
On the flip side, trading down obviously is a gamble, too, because you're giving up a draft position of power for more (but lesser) picks. If you can do it seamlessly (as the Vikings did in 2012 by swapping one spot with Cleveland while picking up a ransom in return), there's very little risk. But if you wind up with a bunch of inferior players when you could have nabbed a star, you look foolish.
The safe thing is keeping your pick and taking the best player available. Waynes might not electrify the fan base, but it's important to remember, too, that some of the Vikings' best first-round draft picks of the past couple of decades came in their original draft slots: Randy Moss at No. 21 in 1998, Chad Greenway at No. 17 in 2006, Adrian Peterson at No. 7 in 2007 and Percy Harvin at No. 22 in 2009.
If you can make a good draft night trade, by all means do it. But if it's not there — which it sounds like was the case Thursday — forcing it for the sake of making a trade is far worse than being prudent and simply adding what should be a very good player.
