This Changes Everything: This Changes Nothing

Dreams of the Apocalypse are only affirmation that what humanity has created is utterly beautiful yet terrifying in its scope, that the individual is subsumed in this mess, twisted by it yet somehow bettered as well.

I've been thinking on what the draft this past weekend means, beyond grades, beyond knee-jerk analysis, beyond, well, jerks in general.

I've been thinking that there's some quality to this draft in particular that for teams could change everything immeasurably, or could change nothing at all.

Maybe it's the preponderance of essential but middling talent. It’s like the middle class in this country. Everyone talks about the middle class, no one actually does anything for them. Yet there they are swinging elections and voting on the dollar, that anonymous power that installs or topples regimes.

So the more I ruminate on the overarching theme of the 2009 draft, this class either changes everything or it changes nothing for the league’s 32 teams.

Odd perhaps, but no one exemplifies both these opposing states of inertia better than Percy Harvin, one of the few elites from the rabble of this middling class. Specifically, Percy Harvin to the Minnesota Vikings.

It is important to note, and certainly has been noted, that Harvin fell to the Vikings much like Randy Moss did just over a decade earlier. A transcendent talent weighted down by past transgressions, causing a plummet down the first round.

No, Moss and Harvin aren’t cut from the same cloth, talent-wise. But they both possess game changing ability even if it operates in different ways.

Critics of the Harvin selection point to a range of issues: maturity, intelligence, lack of polish, hubris. He’s either set to self destruct or incapable of rigging the wires for his explosion onto the NFL scene.

These new Vikings are supposed to honor character that maximizes its talent. Harvin proves the new direction simply a shadow show to dim the lights on the Love Boat scandal, if Bryant McKinnie didn’t already do so last season.

No, these are the same old Vikings even with boy scouts Adrian Peterson, Antoine Winfield, and Steve Hutchinson.

And Harvin changes nothing for the Vikings because he’s just another talented piece in that anti-quarterback movement in Minnesota. Even if the Vikes coax Brett Favre out of retirement, I think this holds. Favre is a much better quarterback even at 40 than Tarvaris Jackson or Sage Rosenfels. But at this late stage he can only fulfill the same arch as those two. A surprising and competitive regular season with diminishing returns, a nonfactor once they reach the playoffs.

(And it’s not just Jett Favre that brings me to this conclusion. I was in the stands at Lambeau, we were chanting MVP during what was an incredible statistical season for a 38 year old signal caller. But we knew it was all a nostalgia trip. The Stones with Ron Wood, not Brian Jones. All of the form, most of the substance, but not all the substance… we supplied the rest, the missing part.)

So Harvin doesn’t change the idea of the Vikings. It’s still talent first, consequences be damned. It’s still a glut everywhere on the field except the most important position. It’s still difficult to discern whether the Vikes brilliantly eschew sound football logic or idiotically defy it.

But Harvin does change the Vikings on field.

This is the pre-draft Vikings. Bernard Berrian is a shiny, high-tech toy without an instruction manual. Sidney Rice is on pause until free agency finds him producing sneaky good numbers on the Jets or Ravens. Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor are trapped in the phantom zone from Superman II.

Harvin brings all these pieces together, his playmaking talent potentially slotted in every skill position on offense, even out of a Wildcat formation. It’s not what he does down field, it’s what he does in the short zones, out of the backfield, across a formation.

Harvin’s play may be raw but it will work between all the polished pieces of the Vikings offense, connecting them as the quarterback position should but currently doesn’t.

It’s not that I lack faith that Childress won’t fuck this up, he most certainly will. Watching the Viking-Eagles playoff game last year removed any doubt in my mind that Childress will never coach this team to the Promised Land. While Brian Dawkins is having the game of his late career, Childress kept sending his receivers over the middle and charging his inexperienced quarterback to attack through the air while perhaps the best player in the league stalks the sidelines or takes the playfake. Seriously, how do you not ride Adrian Peterson when your season is on the line?

Jared Allen, Pat Williams, and Kevin Williams – the best four man front in football even without a fourth body lining up beside them – will soften the blow of Childress’s ineptitude and make this a competitive team. Perhaps enough to keep Childress his job

But these Vikings will put the fear of God into opponents, not just on potential alone any more. Harvin could become the last important piece of this quarterback-less contender and the reason it should face an end of days.