How many idiots does it take to make a bad draft pick?

My answer: one.

On the other hand, it takes a lot of idiots to make a good draft pick.

And at the heart of this discussion are Jimmy Clausen and Colt McCoy and why I'm OK with the Vikings not drafting either one of them, even with their pressing long-term needs at quarterback.

Confused? Good! Now, let me explain.

First, when I say "good" or "bad" draft pick, I mean that a player was drafted lower (good) or higher (bad) than he probably should have been. By this definition, Peyton Manning wasn't a good draft pick. He was picked #1 overall, which was probably about right. The same goes for Adrian Peterson, who was the #7 overall pick, and could arguably be called the #7 best player in the league right now. Similarly, Sam Manuel, the last pick of the 1996 draft who never played a game in the NFL, wasn't a "bad" pick -- he was picked right about where he should have been.

Now consider someone like Troy Williamson. #7 overall, has done squat in his NFL career...clearly a "bad" pick. On the flip side, there's the #199 pick in the 2000 draft, Tom Brady. He was a "good" draft pick.

Most teams probably had Williamson much lower on their draft boards than #7. But the Vikings, thinking themselves "smarter" than everyone else, had him pegged very high and chose him with the #7 overall pick. In other words, it can be argued that 31 of 32 NFL teams were "smart" about Williamson, and it only took one "idiot" team to overdraft him and make him a "bad" pick.

Now, look at Brady. Every NFL team passed on hi, multiple times. Clearly, this was not a good decision. The Patriots finally picked him -- making them the "smart" team and the other 31 teams "idiots." Even so, Brady is an anomaly. 6th-round draft picks don't normally go on to Hall-of-Fame careers. Nobody was commenting on how Brady was a "steal" when he was drafted. 30 of 31 teams didn't even want him on their roster, and the Patriots didn't even care to expend a pick on him until the draft was nearly over.

Clearly, the Patriots did well by drafting Brady. But it's not like they possessed some kind of prescient knowledge that he would go on to the type of career he did. If they did, they would have drafted him much earlier. At most, they were hoping for a capable backup and, perhaps someday down the road, Drew Bledsoe's replacement.

All of which brings us back to Clausen and McCoy. The Vikings could have drafted either player but chose not to do so. Instead, Clausen went #48 overall to the Panthers, while McCoy slid to the third round and was picked in the #85 slot by the Browns. Along with Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow, who were taken before the Vikings' first draft pick, both were considered potential future franchise quarterbacks. All four were featured extensively on ESPN, including a "QB school" run by Jon Gruden, where he broke down each QB.

My question is: If they're so good, how could every NFL team pass on them -- some multiple times?

Yes, not every team needed a quarterback, but I count about 17 possible picks before Clausen went and 25 before McCoy was drafted by teams that could have potentially gone after a QB (including several by Cleveland before the team took McCoy). If these two players are so good and were, according to many draft "experts," undervalued and "steals" by the teams that picked them, then why did it take so long for them to be drafted? I clearly didn't spend weeks breaking down each player, but I came away from his session with Gruden unimpressed. Both might be decent QBs -- and certainly better than what the Vikings look to have under center in 2011 -- but I don't think we "missed out" on either player. Chances are that both of them were "decent" draft picks, picked right about where they should have been.

(And only time will tell if the Denver Broncos were smarter than the likely 31 of 32 NFL teams who didn't think Tim Tebow was worthy of a first-round pick. Given those odds, I'd be pessimistic about Tebow's chances.)

Vikings vs. Bears -- Sorta-hafta-win game

Big showdown with the Bears Sunday night...with a win, the Vikings would be 7-5 with a one-game lead in the division and only Detroit remaining on the divisional schedule. If we assume the Vikings beat Detroit next week (even if the Williams boys are suspended), then they'd be looking at an 8-5 record, 4-2 in the division, and a surprisingly good chance of winning the division, even with a slip down the stretch during that tough December schedule.

If the Vikings lose the game, however, that pretty much ends their division-title chances for the year and puts a serious crimp in their overall playoff plan. At 6-6, the Vikings would be essentially two games behind the 7-5 Bears, who would have swept the Vikings for the season. With at least three other +.500 teams in the NFC that aren't leading their divisions, that would put the Vikings at least in fourth place in competition for two wild-card spots. Not good.

So while I loathe the term "must win" (If the Vikings lose this week, everyone will say that next week's game is a "must win" to keep their faint playoff hopes alive, and so on, and so on, every week until they're actually eliminated from playoff contention. If you can lose a "must win" game and still stay alive, then guess what? It wasn't a "must win"!), this game is pretty close. Fortunately, it's at home, where the Vikings are 4-1 this season, and while the Bears are 3-3 on the road, two of those road wins came against Detroit and St. Louis. All signs would seem to point to a Vikings victory, but you know how that usually goes with this team. Here's hoping for another 14-0 lead in the first two minutes!

* Probably the most cringe-inducing moments in Sunday night's game will come when the Vikings punt to Devin Hester. Interestingly, though, Hester's averaging just a mediocre 6.3 yards per punt return, and has actually been taking off kickoff returns. Nevertheless, expect every announcer and every fan in the Metrodome to expect Chris Kluwe to kick away from Hester, regardless of how effective he actually is.

* The pro-football-reference.com blog recently had a post about unique game scores in the NFL, prompted by that 11-10 Pittsburgh/San Diego game a few weeks ago, and in the process introduced a bunch of neat new toys for finding game scores. Read the post to get all the links, but, for instance, here's the list of all 30-12 games in NFL history, including last week's Vikings/Jaguars game. (That Chicago Bears/Pottsville Maroons game in 1927 was a real barnburner!) Specifically, as it relates to the Bears/Vikings, their earlier 48-41 contest was the first in NFL history with such a score.

My favorite "WTF?" score has to be 5-0, which has occurred three times, including twice in fairly recent times. And then there's this 7-2 gem from 1993, the third of its kind, appropriately between two teams with a combined record of 3-23.

* Another possibility for the Vikings' 2009 QB I hadn't considered: Tim Tebow. Granted, he'll have to declare for the draft and he'd have to slip to the Vikings' pick, but after the Brady Quinn incident in the 2007 draft, anything's possible.

And count me as someone who's not interested. I think Tebow, like Alex Smith in Utah, is a product of Urban Meyer's spread offense and think it unlikely that he'll be even remotely as good in the pros as he is in college. Might be that he could be successful as a part-time QB/part-time WR/slash/Wildcat type of player, but until an NFL player with quarterbacking skills officially declares himself to be that type of player, as opposed to a full-time QB, I don't see it happening.