The Minnesota Vikings have clearly been looking at quarterbacks in this draft cycle, per multiple reports. And, given their position in the back half of a first round, multiple draft gurus project them to move up. Envisioning the team adding your favorite QB in the draft to take over for Kirk Cousins in the 2024 season is exciting.
However, most of the mock drafts that get published only include the first round, so you don’t get a great vision of the players that the team is able to add to improve the squad overall. The Vikings have a decent roster, but they could use help and potential starters at a number of positions on offense and defense. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has made it clear than he wants the team to be as competitive as possible every season. Trading up for a QB means you give up your best asset to get a starter at another position, the pick at No. 23, and potential middle-round picks or future draft capital.
Because of that impact, I wanted to look at how the diverging options — taking a QB or not taking a QB — affected the overall shape of Minnesota’s draft and the outlook for the team in 2023. I used PFF’s Mock Draft Simulator to simulate the two paths for the Vikings below:
Trading Up for a QB
The first thing to address is the trade up using pick 23. In the QB mock, I ended up trading two first-round picks and a 2024 fourth- and fifth-round pick to get up to No. 7 overall. There are a couple of things to note here. First, I think that compensation matches what it would take for the Vikings to move up somewhere between No. 10 and 12. That would mirror the compensation the Chicago Bears gave up to move from No. 20 to No. 11 to draft Justin Fields in 2021.
I previously wrote about how much it might cost for the Vikings to move up to No. 3 overall. At worst, this would allow them to take the third QB on their board, but would cost significantly more than moving up to No. 10. To draft a QB with pick 10, the team would need to get lucky, and it would likely require the Houston Texans passing on a QB at No. 2 to draft Will Anderson, a possibility that has recently gained steam. In that scenario, there’s a decent chance that one of C.J. Stroud, Will Levis, or Anthony Richardson is still available in that range.
For the purposes of this exercise, I’m not too worried about which of the top four QBs is available. Feel free to insert your favorite of the top QBs in that spot, because at this point it’s unclear which one of the players will fall if one does. Taking a QB puts the Vikings in an interesting spot at No. 87, because they only have four picks remaining. That had me looking for a trade down. The simulator suggested the Bears, who I was able get an early and late fourth-round pick from in the trade.
Note that for this pair of mocks, I tried to use trades that seemed realistic. I’ve talked about trade charts in previous articles, and the NFL typically uses values similar to the Jimmy Johnson and Rich Hill charts. I’ve created a calculator for each of the charts to show the value of trades from an analytical and market value perspective. Here are the results for that trade:
This trade gives the other team a win when considering the market value, so it’s a trade that can happen on draft day, but also gives the Vikings a significant advantage when you look at historical results.
With the rest of the draft, I tried to add the positions of biggest need for the Vikings, going for a CB, iDL, WR, iOL, and LB. Again, the specific players are not particularly important, but the ranges are. I see a player of Cory Trice‘s caliber as someone who can compete Booth and Evans for playing time in Year 1. Moro Ojomo projects as someone who would see rotational work to me, and Parker Washington is someone I would put in competition with Jalen Nailor and Jalen Reagor for WR3. I see Jon Gaines and Shaka Heyward as rotational players who would not contribute much immediately but could develop down the line.
In short, I don’t see many contributions from that group of players. Maybe you get starter snaps from someone like Trice, but that’s only one change at a starter position overall after the draft.
Trading down instead
In the next scenario, I decided to trade down with the No. 23 pick. I think this is a very realistic option for the Vikings, especially given how Adofo-Mensah seems to value picks. With that trade, I got a second- and third-rounder back, while moving Minnesota’s fifth-rounder up to the fourth round.
Here is the evaluation of the trade:
For additional transparency, here is the evaluation of the second trade:
I see a corner like Clark Phillips with probably a 60% chance of starting over at least one of Booth and Evans. I see a guy like Trice with more of a 40% chance. I would also have Marvin Mims or a player of his caliber as a clear WR3 over Nailor, as opposed to a player of Washington’s caliber, who I view with a 50/50 shot. Chandler Zavala would also have a chance to win the starting RG job in Year 1. Obviously, my analysis for Ojomo remains the same. Noah Sewell is most likely depth but has a better chance to develop than Heyward. I was also able to add an RB in this mock with Chris Rodriguez and get a QB with a shot to develop in Clayton Tune.
This mock draft would materially impact the Vikings in 2023 and give them up to three new starters, plus a pair of rotational pieces. Compare that to the first mock, where I got three players I consider to be rotational pieces, but also got the QB of the future. It’s also noteworthy that my trade up for a QB left Minnesota with only three picks in 2024: a second, and sixth, and a seventh. Some of that capital can be recouped by trading away players like Dalvin Cook and Za’Darius Smith, but I did not want to project those trades in this scenario because I don’t have a good grasp on the value.
conclusion
Ultimately, the correct decision is in the eye of the beholder. How one feels about Kirk Cousins and the given rookie QB will probably determine whether or not they think it is the right move. Trading down gives the Vikings the ability to add better players at positions they got worse at in the 2023 offseason (moving on from Adam Thielen at WR, all of the starting CBs, and downgrading from Dalvin Tomlinson at iDL) than they got in the trade-up scenario. However, there’s no guarantee that those players will become contributors immediately. One needs to look no further than the 2021 draft, when the Vikings used three third-round picks on players who were cut before the 2022 season to see the dangers of assuming players drafted on Day 2 will be ready to start right away.
A high-quality QB on a rookie deal is the biggest advantage an NFL team can have. With Kevin O’Connell as the head coach, the Vikings have an environment that should be conducive to developing a QB. Cousins’ presence means that player will be able to sit in Year 1 if necessary. All of those factors mean trading up for a QB makes sense, if the right guy is there and the price is reasonable. The team just needs to be willing to live with the cost of a less competitive 2023 season.
