If you’re going to build a winning team in the NFL, it’s important to draft well. Hitting on your high-end draft picks is great, but if you’re going to have sustained success, you need to be able to find the hidden gems in the NFL Draft. The players who — whether it was because of poor athletic testing, curiously low college production, or going to a small school — slip through the cracks but become major contributors.
Perhaps the greatest example of finding value in the NFL Draft is when the New England Patriots found their quarterback of the future—and arguably the greatest quarterback of all time— in Michigan’s Tom Brady in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft.
Brady is the quintessential example at quarterback, but there are examples like him at every position on the field. Recently, NFL.com’s lead NFL Draft writer, Eric Edholm, has been taking a fond look back at drafts’ past and coming up with the best value picks at each position since 2000, and one former Vikings great has made his list at the defensive end position.
Coming in at #4 on his top five value picks at defensive end is former Vikings defensive end, and future Hall of Famer, Jared Allen. Taken in the fourth round of the 2004 NFL Draft, Allen is the second-lowest picked player of Edholm’s top five, with only Indianapolis Colts‘ great Robert Mathis being taken later in the draft. Allen was an immediate success upon arriving in the NFL Draft, notching nine sacks in his rookie campaign. The following season, Allen would notch the first of his eight double-digit sack seasons, with 11.
With all that success, why wasn’t Allen higher on the list? Edholm points to the fact that Allen only spent the first four seasons with the team that drafted him, the Kansas City Chiefs, as the reason for coming in near the bottom of the list. Allen achieved most of his success in the NFL while wearing a Vikings jersey, joining Minnesota before his fifth season in 2008.
Allen would go on to have double-digit sacks in every season with the Vikings, leading the NFL in sacks in two of those seasons — 2007 with 15.5 and 2011 with 22.
When all was said and done, Allen dominated defenses to the tune of 85.5 sacks in a Vikings uniform during his six years with the team, good for seventh all-time in franchise history. Allen is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame next month, becoming the first member of the famed 2004 NFL Draft — one that featured likely future Hall of Famers Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, and Philip Rivers — to receive his gold jacket.