Did the Vikings give up too soon on Clemmings, Beavers?

TJ Clemming's:
Unless you’re a cold-hearted monster, you have sympathy for Clemmings’ situation.
Because of his freakish athleticism for the position, Clemmings was projected by NFL.com as a first or second-round pick. Draft analyst Lance Zierlein compared him to Houston’s Duane Brown and said that he had a very high ceiling.
Zierlein’s write-up was prophetic:
“Like Duane Brown, Clemmings played high school basketball and was a late switch to the offensive tackle position in college. There are holes in his protection technique and he must learn to trust his feet. Clemmings should continue to learn the position and improve. He has the physical traits to become a Pro Bowl tackle, but the Senior Bowl practices exposed how green he still is. Confidence could become an issue with his pass protection unless he develops selective amnesia when beaten.”
The Vikings drafted him based off potential. His tape, a scout told NFL.com, was not all that impressive.
What he needed most was time in low-pressure situations to work through his technical shortcomings and build confidence by making progress from week to week in practice.
What he got was the highest-pressure situations possible. 

Willie Beavers
Any time the New England Patriots sign a player, the immediate reaction is: “What did we miss? ”
The Vikings picking Aviante Collins over Beavers was a little surprising since the former Western Michigan tackle had shown growth during camp. He was one of the highest rated Vikings players by PFF metrics in the final preseason game against the Dolphins.
At 23, Beavers is nowhere close to his peak. In fact, he’s younger than Collins and likely has a higher ceiling.

But making progress this year in camp doesn’t suggest Beavers was getting much closer considering he was the highest drafted player to be cut out of camp last year. Consider how poorly you’d have to perform to be released as a fourth-round pick from a team that had arguably the league’s worst offensive line last season.
Bottom line
Neither release came as a huge surprise since both Clemmings and Beavers – high risk, high reward prospects – did not give the Vikings any indications that they would become quality players some day. It also shouldn’t be a shock that other teams would take a zero-risk swing at them.
So, while there was a case to keep one or both, the Vikings decided they couldn’t take any chances on the offensive line this year.

No.

Silly article. A resounding no. 

Clemmings maybe. Beavers no. Funny thing about this is that they're using PFF's preseason grade to defend Beavers, when it was PFF who ranked Beavers 258th out of 258 qualifying tackles the year he was drafted. And it's silly to suggest that Beavers (5.3 forty, 20 reps) has a higher ceiling than Collins 4.8, 34)

@"purplefaithful" said: “Like Duane Brown, Clemmings played high school basketball and was a late switch to the offensive tackle position in college. There are holes in his protection technique and he must learn to trust his feet. Clemmings should continue to learn the position and improve. He has the physical traits to become a Pro Bowl tackle, but the Senior Bowl practices exposed how green he still is. Confidence could become an issue with his pass protection unless he develops selective amnesia when beaten.” The Vikings drafted him based off potential. His tape, a scout told NFL.com, was not all that impressive. What he needed most was time in low-pressure situations to work through his technical shortcomings and build confidence by making progress from week to week in practice. What he got was the highest-pressure situations possible. 

Both of them shouldn't have been drafted in the first place. It's bad enough that Spielman doesn't like to draft Olineman early, but when you consistently whiff on mid to late round lineman who are long term projects, you
have to overpay for marginal free agents to fill in for those failures. Look at his picks after the 2012 draft where Kalil was the only lineman taken.

2013 Jeff Baca 6th Round
2013 Travis Bond 7th Round
2014 David Yankey 5th Round
2015 TJ Clemmings 4th Round
2015 Tyrus Thompson 6th Round
2015 Austin Shepherd 7th Round
2016 Willie Beavers 4th Round

If you include Kalil, not one of those lineman remain with the Vikings. That's 5 years in a row before 2017 that we have nothing to show for with the Olineman Spielman selected. If any of us performed like that in our jobs, we would have all been fired by now. 

Hopefully Elflein and Isadora pan out. Ricky has to get lucky at some point. 

Clemmings was one of our favorite guy to talk to. Smart, engaging, funny.  For that, I, personally, gave him too much credit.  It took me 18 months before I admitted that he was horrible and getting worse.   He is just like Matt Kalil.  Showed some early capability, but has bad footwork, is slow, lunges at blocks, etc. 

He is gone about a year too late.  Beavers is pretty much a joke.  He was lucky to get put on the practice squad last year.  He is the most recent in a line of Jeff Baca's and David Yankey's.  Big, and played a decent colleges, but did not have the athleticism or strength to play in the NFL

Lol. Didn't they say the Vikings hung on too long when they were here? 

I guess we'll find out if they develop into something elsewhere.  All I know is, when we hired Sparano I was not impressed.   He had no track record indicating that he ever took an oline and made it great.  It's clear the line has gone nowhere with him in charge.  I guess the injuries are the excuse at this point.  

@"comet52" said: I guess we'll find out if they develop into something elsewhere.  All I know is, when we hired Sparano I was not impressed.   He had no track record indicating that he ever took an oline and made it great.  It's clear the line has gone nowhere with him in charge.  I guess the injuries are the excuse at this point.  

I really hope this line can perform, and the chemistry we saw with Elflein and Easton vs. Seattle continues during the regular season. If we can't score more points per game than what we have been doing the past two seasons, we are dead in the water. 

regarding sparano... isnt it a bit early to tell with him?  I mean last year has to be a throw away, with the ridiculous amount of injuries that his unit faced, to determine his success, or lack of, as an OL coach with the Vikes.  granted he has a history to go off of,  but as far as what hes done here to date IMO its to early to say for sure. 

@"JimmyinSD" said: regarding sparano... isnt it a bit early to tell with him?  I mean last year has to be a throw away, with the ridiculous amount of injuries that his unit faced, to determine his success, or lack of, as an OL coach with the Vikes.  granted he has a history to go off of,  but as far as what hes done here to date IMO its to early to say for sure. 

@"TBro" said:

@"JimmyinSD" said: regarding sparano... isnt it a bit early to tell with him?  I mean last year has to be a throw away, with the ridiculous amount of injuries that his unit faced, to determine his success, or lack of, as an OL coach with the Vikes.  granted he has a history to go off of,  but as far as what hes done here to date IMO its to early to say for sure. 

That's a fair point. It's not just Sporano, it's the entire offensive coaching staff led by Shurmur. They need to figure out how to be less predictable, more explosive, and average more than 17 points per game like they did after the bye week. I threw out the Bears game as the one outlier since it was the last game of the season and neither team had anything to play for.  

@"TBro" said: Both of them shouldn't have been drafted in the first place. It's bad enough that Spielman doesn't like to draft Olineman early, but when you consistently whiff on mid to late round lineman who are long term projects, you have to overpay for marginal free agents to fill in for those failures. Look at his picks after the 2012 draft where Kalil was the only lineman taken.

2013 Jeff Baca 6th Round
2013 Travis Bond 7th Round
2014 David Yankey 5th Round
2015 TJ Clemmings 4th Round
2015 Tyrus Thompson 6th Round
2015 Austin Shepherd 7th Round
2016 Willie Beavers 4th Round

If you include Kalil, not one of those lineman remain with the Vikings. That's 5 years in a row before 2017 that we have nothing to show for with the Olineman Spielman selected. If any of us performed like that in our jobs, we would have all been fired by now. 

Hopefully Elflein and Isadora pan out. Ricky has to get lucky at some point. 

How has Ricky been this bad? Is it all him? Does it fall on Tony? Zim? The scouts? The only consistent factor is Ricky. But how can he truly not get one guy to pan out over all this time? As was mentioned, SOMEONE has to pan out sooner or later!!!
Grabbing beavers was just stupid, Clemmings was all potential and was a risk but was hyped up too, the rest were late rounders but you think one at least sticks eventually.
For Ricky to last this long you'd think he'd be doing something spectacular, and he has done well on the DL, but has struggled at QB (although Teddy's knee wasn't his fault and he was developing, but the rest of the time he's been here hasn't been special) and OL (which has just simply been garbage for a decade), two of the primary positions to build a contender.

@"Neptizzle" said:

@"TBro" said: Both of them shouldn't have been drafted in the first place. It's bad enough that Spielman doesn't like to draft Olineman early, but when you consistently whiff on mid to late round lineman who are long term projects, you have to overpay for marginal free agents to fill in for those failures. Look at his picks after the 2012 draft where Kalil was the only lineman taken.

2013 Jeff Baca 6th Round
2013 Travis Bond 7th Round
2014 David Yankey 5th Round
2015 TJ Clemmings 4th Round
2015 Tyrus Thompson 6th Round
2015 Austin Shepherd 7th Round
2016 Willie Beavers 4th Round

If you include Kalil, not one of those lineman remain with the Vikings. That's 5 years in a row before 2017 that we have nothing to show for with the Olineman Spielman selected. If any of us performed like that in our jobs, we would have all been fired by now. 

Hopefully Elflein and Isadora pan out. Ricky has to get lucky at some point. 

How has Ricky been this bad? Is it all him? Does it fall on Tony? Zim? The scouts? The only consistent factor is Ricky. But how can he truly not get one guy to pan out over all this time? As was mentioned, SOMEONE has to pan out sooner or later!!!
Grabbing beavers was just stupid, Clemmings was all potential and was a risk but was hyped up too, the rest were late rounders but you think one at least sticks eventually.
For Ricky to last this long you'd think he'd be doing something spectacular, and he has done well on the DL, but has struggled at QB (although Teddy's knee wasn't his fault and he was developing, but the rest of the time he's been here hasn't been special) and OL (which has just simply been garbage for a decade), two of the primary positions to build a contender.

@"JimmyinSD" said:

so Rick was 50/50 with his QB picks  Ponder was a failure but Teddy was looking promising.  cant really ding him to hard on that one IMO.  as far as OL... thats a different matter IMO as far as Ricks concernced,  but Tony certainly shouldnt be held accountable for OL drafting under RS, except for maybe the Beavers pick, but who knows who called that one.  Zim is Zim,  he will learn to be more of a well rounded coach with time, but in todays footall everybody (including coaches) are so specialized so early that how many players and coaches really know much about anything outside of their area of expertise until they become head coaches.