Links: The Mike Doss edition

Snow on the ground and temps in the teens. You have to love April in Minnesota!

The big news for Viking fans, as Pro Football Talk notes, is that safety Mike Doss has signed with the Vikings (this means it's time to scrounge through shoe boxes of football cards looking for my Mike Doss rookie cards that before this moment I cared about not at all). But why does this make sense? I guess you can never have too much depth in the secondary, but this doesn't seem like a position of need (the Vikes now have Darren Sharper, Dwight Smith, Tank Williams, Greg Blue, and Doss at safety). The Vikes will have Antoine Winfield and Cedric Griffin as starting CBs. My guess is that instead of bringing in a third CB in nickel situations, one of the safeties will be the primary nickel back. We'll have to see how that works out--I don't know if a lot of teams bring in a third safety rather than a third corner in nickel. I'll probably write more about Doss later today. But Blue (and maybe Smith or Williams) is probably out.

The Ragnarok is looking at the Vikings' choices with their second round pick. The second round choice will be critical for the 2007 Vikings. The Vikes' biggest need is clearly at Wide Receiver, but they are unlikely to fulfill that need with the #7 overall pick (Calvin Johnson won't be there, and the other guys are a reach at #7). The Vikings will very likely select the best available WR (from by many accounts, a deep WR draft) with their second pick.

Ryan Kibbe of KSTP (via Kansas Viking) speculates that the Vikings ARE interested in David Carr. Why? Because when he asked, David Carr's agent said "No comment." So that's all it takes? If people would ask me absurd questions, I could really start to hype myself. "PV, are you the greatest 3 point shooter of all-time?" "No comment." "PV, is it true you've written the Great American Novel but refuse to publish it?" "No comment."

A new blog, Minnesota's Sports Guys, should be good reading for Minnesota sports fans. They provide links to sports stories and commentary on the local teams, and have separate pages for the major local teams. If you're a Minnesota sports fan, you should check it out.

And finally, a non-Viking bit in today's links: Sports Media Watch looks at the popularity of women's basketball, with results that may surprise you. Sports Media Watch is typically all over TV ratings for sporting events.