The Belichick effect

By Jonathan Mohr  |   Thursday, June 05, 2008  |  Comments( 1 )

Minnesota Vikings
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For a guy with a total of two receptions during his two-year NFL career, a player who has appeared in just one regular-season game, many Minnesota Vikings fans seem pretty high on Garrett Mills.

Vikings loyalists who didn't watch their team's game against the Broncos last December have never seen Mills play in the NFL, because that's the only day he ever has. Granted, Mills looked solid in that game, making a couple of nice catches from his tight end position for 26 total yards.

However, with Visanthe Shiancoe doing little during his first season with Minnesota to justify the $18 million free-agent contract he signed in March 2007, Vikings fans seem to be banking on the hope that Mills is ready to burst onto the scene and answer all of the team's questions at tight end.

And the reason for that optimism can be boiled down to one simple fact: Bill Belichick liked Mills enough to spend a fourth-round draft pick on him coming out of Tulsa in 2006, then got upset when the Vikings thwarted his attempt to sneak Mills through waivers just before the 2007 season began.

As the story goes, Belichick learned the Vikings were interested in Mills and, in a conversation with Brad Childress while the waiver process was unfolding, told Minnesota's head coach the Patriots were interested in a player the Vikings had put on waivers, but they would leave him alone if the Vikings didn’t claim Mills.

"I said, 'Well, I'm really interested in your guy, so we'll have to let our guy slide,' " Childress was quoted as saying at the time. "He didn't really care for that. He was trying to leverage."

The Patriots did indeed sign the Viking, linebacker David Herron, then released him nine days later. Mills, who can also play fullback and H-back, didn’t see the field for Minnesota until Week 16.

Such is the respect given to the league’s current football dynasty that many Vikings fans seem content with their team’s situation at tight end these days because of the presence of Mills. Or, more accurately, because the Patriots thought highly enough of Mills that they tried to keep the Vikings from acquiring him. Never mind the fact that the Patriots put Mills on waivers in the first place.

If Mills was just another castoff from a perennial NFL cellar dweller, would Vikings fans be so content with their current roster of tight ends that also includes Shiancoe, Jim Kleinsasser, Jeff Dugan and Braden Jones?

Shiancoe has demonstrated the ability to drop the big pass; Kleinsasser has never been much of a receiver; Dugan has 15 receptions during his four years in the NFL; finally, Mills and Jones have played in one NFL game between them.

That lineup provides neither the threat to the deep middle of the field the Vikings need for their West Coast offense nor the security blanket a young quarterback like Tarvaris Jackson needs when he’s under pressure and is looking for options to unload the ball.

Mills may eventually turn into a pass-catching machine. Maybe 2008 will be his breakout year, as some Vikings fans seem to believe. But at this point, most of those same fans have nothing more to base that belief on than one semi-productive game and a Bill Belichick phone call.
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About Jonathan Mohr

A lifelong Vikings fan, I live in the Twin Cities area (about a mile from Winter Park) and work as an editor at a boating magazine. As with all long-suffering Vikings fans, I patiently look forward to the day when Minnesota finally breaks through and wins a Super Bowl. Until then I eat my ...
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