On Saturday night, Lewis Cine had the game the Minnesota Vikings were waiting for.
Serving as a team captain, Cine took the field and recorded seven tackles and a sack in a loss to the Tennessee Titans. He made a flashy play to end the Titans’ opening drive of the game and made another key stop in the third quarter on a scramble attempt by Malik Willis.
Kevin O’Connell praised the second-year safety after the game by declaring that Cine “was in a great spot” and discussed the opportunity to learn alongside Harrison Smith, Camryn Bynum and Josh Metellus.
He had the type of game the Vikings knew Cine was capable of. But it wasn’t during a key NFC North matchup or a battle late in the season. It was in August, and it pointed out everything that was wrong with the process of selecting Cine with their first-round pick in the 2022 draft.
The first 11 selections of the 2022 draft were not kind to the Vikings. They watched as standouts Aidan Hutchinson, Sauce Gardner, Kayvon Thibodeaux and Garrett Wilson came off the board. Derek Stingley Jr. and Chris Olave, who also would have fit Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s competitive rebuild, had also been selected before the Vikings were on the clock.
But there were still several players the Vikings were looking at with that pick. Alabama wide receiver Jameson Williams was the most prominent. Williams displayed elite speed with the Crimson Tide, but a torn ACL in the College Football Playoff made him more of a project than an impact player.
The Vikings were hellbent on getting the last drops out of the team that Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman had built. Therefore, they were looking to fill several holes on the roster and began looking for the draft’s strength. While there were a few impact players such as Kyle Hamilton and Jordan Davis on the board, they felt like they could take multiple cracks in the top 70 of the draft. That way, they could add solid talent on a team that needed depth.
The Vikings traded down 20 spots with the Detroit Lions, who gave up the 32nd-, 34th-, and 66th-overall picks in the draft for the right to select Williams. If you look at who the Vikings passed on, you would think that they won this trade in a landslide. Williams has yet to pan out for Detroit.
After his recovery from injury took longer than expected, Williams returned to practice in November and caught a 41-yard touchdown in a Dec. 11 victory over the Vikings. However, that was his only catch of his rookie season. Williams’ trajectory changed again in the offseason when the NFL gave him a six-game suspension for violating the league’s gambling policy.
While the Lions could hope for a recurrence of Josh Gordon’s 2013 season, where he led the league in receiving yards despite a two-game suspension for an offseason DUI, Williams’ training camp hasn’t been impressive. He capped it off with a brutal drop during the Detroit’s opening preseason game.
Williams has shown some flashes, but the stop-and-start nature of his career doesn’t suggest a sudden breakout. For the Vikings to get three picks for a prospect they didn’t prefer is a moral victory. However, it doesn’t feel as good when you consider what they actually got with those picks.
In addition to Cine, who was the centerpiece of the trade with the Lions, the Vikings got creative. They traded again when they were on the clock with the 34th-overall pick and acquired picks No. 53 and 59 from the Green Bay Packers, who took Christian Watson.
A few picks later, the Vikings traded pick No. 53 along with picks No. 77 and 192 to the Indianapolis Colts to trade up to the 42nd-overall pick to select Andrew Booth Jr.
Many pundits considered Booth to be a first-round pick at the beginning of the draft process. The Athletic’s Dane Brugler listed him as the No. 4 cornerback in the class. Like Cine, Booth has also struggled to stay on the field and has worked behind 2022 fourth-round pick Akayleb Evans, 2023 free-agent signings Byron Murphy Jr. and Joejuan Johnson, and 2023 third-round selection Mekhi Blackmon.
The Vikings took Ed Ingram with the 59th-overall pick, and his rookie season couldn’t have gone worse. He led all offensive linemen in quarterback pressures allowed, and it’s unclear how his camp has gone. He had an appearance in the first preseason game but didn’t play in the second, and Dalton Risner came in for a free-agent visit.
Minnesota also stayed at pick No. 66 and selected Brian Asamoah. An undersized linebacker out of Oklahoma, Asamoah is a projected starter heading into this season. But Ivan Pace Jr.’s emergence in this year’s training camp combined with a lingering injury could put Asamoah’s his role in question once the season begins.
Out of the four players the Vikings acquired from picks stemming from the initial trade with the Lions, you could argue that only one of them, Asamoah, has a chance of becoming a better player than Williams. But none of this would matter if Cine lived up to Minnesota’s initial projection.
Cine was an athletic marvel at the University of Georgia. He used his physicality to stand out on one of the greatest defenses in the history of college football. With the ability to play multiple roles, Cine was Brugler’s No. 3-ranked safety in the 2022 edition of his yearly draft guide($), “The Beast.”
“Overall, Cine lacks ideal size by NFL standards and has marginal ball skills,” Brugler wrote. “But he is an enforcer against the run with the athleticism in coverage to make plays. He is an ascending talent with NFL starting skills, similar to Xavier McKinney as a prospect.”
Cine’s profile is similar to Notre Dame’s Kyle Hamilton, who the Baltimore Ravens took with the 14th-overall pick. The Vikings probably figured that they could achieve their goal of hitting the “sweet spot” of the draft and adding a premier player to their defense. But the latter hasn’t panned out. Cine’s missed tackle sprung Tyjae Spears’ 33-yard touchdown run on Saturday night, and similar errors showed up during Minnesota’s opening preseason game against the Seattle Seahawks.
The biggest difference might be that, while Cine has all the athleticism of a premiere safety, he lacks the football sense that Hamilton had coming out of Notre Dame.
“Hamilton frustrates quarterbacks with all the ways he impacts the game and will need an NFL defensive scheme that understands how to maximize his versatile talent,” Brugler wrote in his scouting report. “A mash-up of Isaiah Simmons and Justin Simmons, he has the potential to be a diverse matchup weapon in the NFL due to his rare combination of physical traits and natural football instincts.”
Comparing any prospect to Hamilton, who could be on his way to becoming an All-Pro in Baltimore, is a high standard. But Cine can’t even get past anyone on his own roster even though Metellus and Bynum don’t have his jaw-dropping athleticism.
That’s why I question what Cine can be for the Vikings. A gruesome leg injury and lack of reps have hampered his development, and it’s unlikely he’ll become that elite player Minnesota was hoping for when they drafted him. Even if Cine becomes an adequate NFL safety, the additional resources weren’t enough to pass on Hamilton or Davis, the latter of whom went 13th overall to the Philadelphia Eagles.
This isn’t an indictment of Cine’s career as much as Minnesota’s process. It feels like they overthought what should have been an easy decision with the 12th-overall pick. Instead, the Vikings are left with uncertainty about a handful of players who haven’t fulfilled the vision the front office had for them 15 months ago.
