Christian Ponder(notes) had a career 61.8 percent completion rate at Florida State.
(AP)

After playing footsie with Brett Favre(notes) over the last two seasons, the Minnesota Vikings put themselves in a position to need a starting quarterback rather desperately in preparation for the 2011 campaign. With Favre out of football (at least, that's what he tells us in May) and a new Minnesota regime leading the way through what might be a painful rebuild, GM Rick Spielman and head coach Leslie Frazier surprised just about everybody by selecting Florida State quarterback Christian Ponder with the 12th overall pick.

Not that Ponder doesn't come to the NFL with an impressive skill set – he certainly does – but it was a risky pick for a player who underwent three separate surgeries to his throwing arm in the last two years.

However, Ponder had a great pre-draft audition phase, starting at the Senior Bowl, where he was among the most impressive quarterbacks in the week of practice, and was

Editor's note: Yahoo! Sports will break down how 12 top 2011 NFL draft picks can immediately impact their new clubs.

Auburn's defensive tackle Nick Fairley(notes) celebrates against Oregon in the BCS championship game on Jan. 10, 2011.
(Getty Images)

Just two years after the 0-16 nightmare created by the historically inept Matt Millen, the 2010 Detroit Lions managed to become a very dangerous team under the leadership of new general manager Martin Mayhew and head coach Jim Schwartz. Two solid drafts had helped overcome the personnel mismanagement of the prior regime, and the 2010 first-round selection of Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh(notes) paid enormous dividends when his dominant season ended with a Defensive Rookie of the Year nod.

Detroit made some noise in the NFC North in 2010, but the team's 6-10 record was due in part to a secondary that couldn't consistently stop anybody, even with the help given by a dominant front. So, when the Lions chose Auburn defensive tackle

Editor's note: Yahoo! Sports will break down how 12 top 2011 NFL draft picks can immediately impact their new clubs.

Purdue's Ryan Kerrigan(notes) hopes to fit into the Redskins 3-4 defense.
(Getty Images)

In 2010, the Washington Redskins switched to a 3-4 defense under the supervision of new defensive coordinator Jim Haslett. As with most circumstances in which a team tries to force a scheme on the wrong personnel, the experiment was a bit of a disaster – it gave Albert Haynesworth(notes) yet another reason to alienate himself from his coaching staff, and the 'Skins fell from 11th to 26th in Football Outsiders' opponent-adjusted defensive rankings. Like most supposed purveyors of the 3-4 defense, Haslett actually wound up calling a lot of 4-2-5 nickel concepts to fit his personnel and adjust for offensive tendencies.

Now a year removed from the change, the Redskins are charged with finding (or creating) players who fit the aggressive 3-4 ideas Haslett would prefer to run. And, in

yahoo_raidersticketsWhen Oakland Raiders employees were called to a meeting with chief executive Amy Trask on March 11 — the day the NFL's lockout started — there must have been a lot of worry in the room, After all, teams had already made noises about the kind of cost-cutting measures since put in place by the Miami Dolphins and several other teams (namely, pay cuts).

But Trask had a different idea in mind, and a different way to present it. Those Raiders employees who wanted to sidestep their own seemingly inevitable pay deductions and possible layoffs would need to sell tickets in an amount that equaled at least 10 percent of their salaries during the length of the lockout.

That's for all employees, though we're pretty sure that Trask and team owner Al Davis are exempt. "I understand that some clubs are taking different approaches," Trask recently told USA Today's Jarrett Bell. "(But) a very strong argument can be made that this is something that staff members of every team should be doing all the

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In the wake of the latest labor news, we thought it might be time to do an expanded, multi-guest version of the Shutdown Corner Podcast, and we've lined up three interesting folks for your edification.

First, we have Mike Silver, the longtime Yahoo! Sports NFL guy, noted rock-and-roll journalist, and inveterate Cal softball fan. Mike was good enough to stay in one place for half an hour and give his take on the Eighth Circuit Court ruling, the ongoing game of chicken between the owners and players, and how he thinks the debacle may end. And anytime you can get a Rolling Stones "Turd On the Run" reference from "Exile on Main Street"… well, that's just a bonus. Mike's article archive can be found here, and you should definitely be following him on Twitter as well.

Our final guests are two of the truly under-represented in this entire labor fight — undrafted free agents Adam Froman and David Mims. Froman, a quarterback from Louisville, spent his first two post-high school years at Santa

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For those hoping that the generally pro-business 8^th Circuit Court would somehow see the players' side of things and lift the lockout that has been in place with one minor break since March, it's time for a reality check. On Monday afternoon, the court came down with a 24-page ruling (which you can read here) which extended the lockout on the owners' behalf, and cited the court's opinion that the owners had a solid case on the merits — that this dispute is a labor fight at its heart as opposed to an antitrust issue requiring litigation.

It was the first real victory for the league in a court of law in a very long time, and sets things up for the Brady v. NFL appeal hearing that begins on June 3.

Related: Sign the Yahoo! petition on Facebook to restore football!

The court first laid out the parameters, as detailed below:

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 8(a) governs the power of a court of appeals to stay an order of a district court pending appeal. Under that Rule, we consider