The first day of the draft was a chaotic mess. One of the more fun first rounds in recent memory topped its own Marquise Brown trade with an A.J. Brown trade, and the Minnesota Vikings joined in the fun by doing a bunch of things that are all hard to process. Not to say they’re bad or good, just that they are… complicated. There are moving parts that need to be considered before we can really decide how we feel. Let’s all go through that process together, shall we?
Vikings Trade Down With Lions
At pick No. 12, the Vikings were on the clock. In my personal opinion, only two players were left on the board that the Vikings could have justifiably taken: Malik Willis and Kyle Hamilton. Considering the Vikings extended Kirk Cousins just 46 days ago, we can probably write Malik Willis out. That leaves Hamilton. Hamilton is a lights-out safety who I’ve compared to Harrison Smith himself, only a 6’4″ version.
I certainly thought the Vikings would slam Hamilton and get out of the draft with one of the top three players in it (though, some would disagree). Instead, they traded back with the Detroit Lions. Before we start processing the idea of passing on Hamilton, letting a division rival come up for their ideal player, or anything else, let’s run the numbers.
For this, I prefer to use Rich Hill’s trade chart, which is based on trades that teams have made before. Many other trade charts base themselves on how prospects tend to turn out, and they almost always declare the trade down the winner over the trade up. PFF, Jason Spielberger, and Seth Walder all concur. The Rich Hill chart differs.
| Vikings Get: | Lions Get: |
| Pick 32 (Lewis Cine, S, Georgia) Pick 34 Pick 66 |
Pick 12 (Jameson Williams, WR Alabama) Pick 46 |
The Rich Hill chart has the Vikings losing the trade by about 50 points, equivalent to a third-round pick. If Minnesota had traded pick No. 77 instead of 46 back to the Lions, the trade would have come out about even. Essentially, you can boil the trade down as such: Detroit paid less than teams typically pay to move from pick No. 32 to pick 12, but trading down is so powerful that the Vikings are still favored to end up with a better haul of players.
The fact that the Vikings let the Lions come up at a discount still stings, historical precedent be damned. Detroit is a division rival, as easy as that is to forget. They wanted Jameson Williams so badly they were willing to trade up 20 spots. Minnesota enabled that, and now they’ll play him twice a year. The Vikings could have simply taken Williams themselves, and chose not to. They’d better hope their evaluation pans out, and that Detroit’s doesn’t.
Still, trading with a division rival should incur a higher price. If the Lions want to get a player they’ll play you twice a year with, they should have to pay a premium or find a different partner. Instead, Detroit got a discount.
There’s also the matter of passing up Kyle Hamilton, who the Baltimore Raven took two picks later. At the time, it made some sense to pass on Hamilton. After all, the Vikings have Cam Bynum and feel pretty good about him. Perhaps he is now the penciled-in starter. Until…
Vikings Select Lewis Cine, S, Georgia
The Vikings picked a different safety. So discard those thoughts about Bynum possibly taking the next step. He just got replaced with a first-round pick. That’s not to relegate him to the bench forever. Bynum, Cine, and Harrison Smith can all be on the field at the same time, not unlike the three-safety sets the Vikings used over the last two years. In fact, those sets can be an asset.
Imagine you are a quarterback playing against the Vikings. Say you’re in a 2×2 formation, with two receivers on one side of the formation, and a receiver and tight end split out on the other side. To combat the two receivers, the Vikings send out two corners (Patrick Peterson and Chandon Sullivan). To combat the other side, they send out Harrison Smith to cover the tight end and Cam Dantzler to cover the wideout with Bynum playing high safety. Those line up pretty directly — too directly. As the quarterback, it tips you off that the Vikings have called a man coverage.
Now, replace Chandon Sullivan with Lewis Cine, a hard-hitting box safety. Looks different, right? Cine could cover a slot corner with his 4.37 speed. He could also back into a deep zone pretty quickly. It could be man or zone. You don’t know cleanly anymore and have to rely on other information.
Even if Bynum becomes more of a backup, that’s fine. He’s a fourth-round pick in his second year, a cleanly held backup role is a perfectly fine spot — especially considering that he becomes the heir apparent to Smith whenever he retires. The duo long-term is now figured out. Aim the rest of your resources elsewhere.
To evaluate Cine himself briefly, he is a downhill, hard-hitting safety with elite closing speed. He is not a deep-coverage safety or a man cover safety. Cine is built to chase things down across the field and punish them.
This showed itself in the red zone especially, where the only space left is horizontal. His ability to read, react, and break on the ball is very good. His athleticism and speed turn it into an elite trait. Wishing Aaron Rodgers the best of luck with his favorite swing screen RPOs. Cine is the perfect player to counter them.
The Vikings did not get the best safety in the draft, though. Cine is a hard-hitter more than a tackler who needs to completely reconstruct his tackling form. He hits players too high, which didn’t punish him as much in college as it will in the pros. It’s a lot harder to tackle 5’10” bowling-ball running backs without a polished ability to wrap up and drag down.
He doesn’t have the ball skills of a true cover safety either, only notching one interception in his career. That’s not his job. Cine is an intercontinental ballistic missile. Point him at whatever you want to get nuked — even if it’s in a different hemisphere.
Cine could learn more in his time in the NFL. If he developed his cover skills in man-to-man coverage, he’d become a much more formidable option. But in getting him, they passed on someone who already has that skill. No assembly required.
Picking Cine, Passing On Hamilton
But why did they pass on Hamilton if they were going to select Cine? This is going to be the hardest question to wrap your head around. Hamilton has the ball skills Cine lacks, and with all the read, diagnose, and cover ability. Why not take him when you had the chance?
Obviously, the Vikings got something in return for this sacrifice. We’ll have a clearer picture of what that is after Rounds 2 and 3, but for now, they picked up picks No. 34 and 66 in exchange for 46 and the difference between Hamilton and Cine. So, what’s the difference between Hamilton and Cine? What is the value you place on ball skills? That’s probably a highly debatable question, so just come up with your own answer and put it in your pocket. We’ll deal with that after Day 2.
If the Vikings were as high on Cine as Kwesi Adofo-Mensah implied after the draft, then maybe the difference between Cine and Hamilton wasn’t all that big to them. It was to me, but my board won’t look like their board (or, at least, it shouldn’t, I’m just a guy with an iMac who drank too much coffee). Let’s say the Vikings had Hamilton as their 12th-ranked player and Cine as their 15th-ranked player. Getting Cine at 32 in that scenario would look pretty good. Perhaps the Vikings just weren’t as high as Hamilton as I am. It’s a fair opinion, although I disagree with it.
Adofo-Mensah also mentioned an offer to trade out of pick No. 32 entirely that he considered, but declined.
Day 2 will go a long way toward defining my opinion of the trade. Once I see the holistic draft haul, the moving gears and levers will start to clear up into a coherent picture. For now, though, give your brain a break and enjoy this highlight reel of a seemingly clairvoyant Cine blowing up various plays before they have a chance.
