In a perfect world, NFL free agency would be the ultimate way to rebuild your franchise. Instead of developing the players your team desperately needs, you can speed up the process and have a playmaker ready to go for a large sum of cash.
While the Vikings are hoping that’s how to turn around a 5-10-1 franchise, it’s not as easy as finding the next Antoine Winfield. Instead, many are left scratching their heads when big money contracts don’t turn out.
5. 2010 Brett Favre
Favre actually signed with Minnesota before the 2009 season, but his second year with the Vikings made his tenure feel like a bad free-agent deal.
After he cost the Vikings a trip to the Super Bowl with a brutal interception, Favre wasn’t sure that he wanted to run into another team placing a bounty on his head. Because of that, Brad Childress arranged a trip to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to beg Favre to come back for his second season.
A normal human being would have gritted their teeth and accepted the $20 million left on Favre’s contract, but he loved the attention and decided to come back. The Vikings reward was a 5-8 record in 13 starts with 11 touchdowns and 19 interceptions.
The plane ride and the $20 million felt like a free agency pitch gone wrong and sent the Vikings into their downward spiral as they try to find a long-term answer at quarterback.
4. Brad Badger
Sometimes a team will hope to catch a player in the prime of his career when he hits free agency. That was the thought process when the Vikings signed Badger prior to the 2001 season.
The momentum of three successful seasons in Washington didn’t follow him to Minnesota as Badger became the swinging gate for the Vikings’ offensive line.
After a 11-21 record in his two seasons as a starter, the Vikings invested the 7th overall pick in the 2002 draft on Bryant McKinnie. It can be argued that McKinnie was better than Badger during his rookie season despite missing the first half with a contract holdout.
3. Madieu Williams
You can’t knock the type of person Williams is. He constantly gave back to the community and gave $2 million to the University of Maryland (his alma mater) to build a center focused on global health. Such contributions made him the Walter Payton Man of the Year award winner in 2010, but that was not indicative of his play on the field.
An emerging talent at age 26, Williams signed a six-year deal in 2007. The Vikings hoped he would form a nice tandem with Darren Sharper, but those dreams fizzled when Williams had trouble staying on the field.
Those injuries helped his performance decline when he was on the field, and the Vikings released him prior to the 2011 season.
2. Bernard Berrian
Like Williams, Berrian was a top priority for the Vikings during the 2007 free agency period. After being borderline kidnapped, Brad Childress and the rest of his staff chained him to a locker and forced him to have a conversation with the master of the “Kick @$# Offense” until he signed on the dotted line.
That six-year, $42 million contract was awful as Berrian couldn’t take the next step after showing promise with the Chicago Bears. After his receptions went down in every year except for 2009, he became a distraction for the team and was released after five games in 2011.
1. Fred Smoot
Two-thirds of the world is covered by water, but that last third was definitely not covered by Smoot.
The cornerback signed with the Vikings to hopefully form a dominant duo with Antoine Winfield, but Smoot never lived up to his part of the deal. After two seasons and a grudge with Childress, he was cut just two seasons into his contract and went crawling back to the Washington Redskins.
It’s fair to say the only thing that Smoot could cover in Minnesota was part of that two-thirds of water known as Lake Minnetonka – and even then he needed the help of a boat load of strippers to do it.
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Chris Schad contributes to 105 The Ticket and has had his work featured on the Bleacher Report and Yahoo Contributor Network. He serves as the Vikings Lead Writerfor Pro Football Spot. Find him on Twitter @crishad. |