Pro Football Focus is the home to so many good ideas and plenty of data that allows new ideas to populate football fans’ heads. Their advanced data has allowed the game of football to take a critical step, and now they are taking that data and applying it to a new exercise: re-drafting.
They want to re-draft some classic NFL drafts with the data they now have at their disposal, and the first up is the 2006 class.
The Vikings originally selected Chad Greenway 17th overall that year, and he was a fan favorite for years. In this re-draft, though, Minnesota takes a different route and takes away from their division rival the Green Bay Packers by getting Greg Jennings.
PFF writes up the steal of Jennings, saying, “As Minnesota was trying to transition at quarterback from veteran Brad Johnson to the youngster Tarvaris Jackson, they needed another weapon in the passing game. They select former Green Bay Packer Greg Jennings here before he can torture them for the next seven years. At the peak of his powers, Jennings turned in three seasons with more than 1,100 receiving yards and eight consecutive seasons with at least a 71.0 PFF receiving grade.”
Chad Greenway does not end up going in round one of this hypothetical re-draft, so for the sake of Vikings fans, we can pretend he ended up in Minnesota anyway. It is fun to see, though, that the Vikings take away from Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.
