ESPN’s Seth Walder believed the Minnesota Vikings got good value when they traded pick No. 34 to the Green Bay Packers for picks 53 and 59 in 2022.
“The numbers alone don’t quite do Minnesota justice here,” he wrote, “because they traded with a division rival.
“Critics will say this is bad because Minnesota let the Packers fill a critical need with the selection of Christian Watson,” Walder continued in his analysis. “This is faulty logic because that leaves out the context that Green Bay let Minnesota have two picks that were collectively worth more than what they used on Watson, plus the Packers might have traded up and gotten Watson from someone else anyway.”
Walder was right. Many Vikings fans didn’t like the trade.
The Star Tribune ran photos of Vikings fan David Verhota crying out in agony and giving the pick a thumbs down. “I’m upset [because] we traded down that far and didn’t get a pick for next year,” he told the paper.
Hindsight is 20/20 on the 2022 draft, but many fans echoed Verhota’s sentiment. The Vikings shouldn’t have traded with a division rival, and they didn’t get enough in return. Ultimately, three competing forces collided on April 28, 2022: reactionary fans, stoic analysts, and Adofo Mensah’s Wall Street mind.
Before trading with the Packers, Minnesota traded the 12th and 46th picks to the Detroit Lions for picks 32, 34, and 66. PFF and Jason Spielberger agreed with Walder that the Vikings won that trade. However, the Rich Hill trade chart indicated they lost it.
“The fact that the Vikings let the Lions come up at a discount still stings, historical precedent be damned,” Luke Braun wrote at the time. “Detroit is a division rival, as easy as that is to forget. They wanted Jameson Williams so badly that they were willing to trade up 20 spots. Minnesota enabled that, and now they’ll play him twice a year.”
It might be funny to see Braun dismiss the Lions as a Vikings rival, especially after they pounded Minnesota in a highly anticipated regular-season game. Still, they were coming off a 3-13-1 season, went 9-8, and missed the playoffs in 2022. Williams had 1,001 yards last year but only had 395 yards in his first two seasons. The former Alabama receiver also had gambling and gun incidents.
“You’ve got a big team, and you’ve got depth needed, and you’ve got things you’ve got to fill out, so I think volume is really important,” Adofo-Mensah said after taking Cine. “Now, I would push that whatever chart anybody is using, there’s no amount of seventh-round picks that will equal the value of a first pick. You could do that with a thousand seventh-round picks, and that’s not going to equal the value because there’s a specialness that comes with that first-round pick that isn’t easily replaceable.”
Minnesota selected Lewis Cine at 32, then traded pick 34 to the Packers for 53 and 59. The Vikings took Ed Ingram at 59, despite his character concerns, and benched him this year. However, Adofo-Mensah traded picks 53, 77, and 192 to the Indianapolis Colts for 42 and 122. Minnesota used pick 42 to take Andrew Booth, a corner with an injury history who many felt still was the steal of the draft.
“The Vikings traded back in the first round and took Georgia safety Lewis Cine to close out Day 1. Good pick,” wrote Todd McShay. “But the team’s first selection of Day 2 was the one that really caught my eye. I thought Booth might be a first-rounder, and I put him at No. 27 on my board. The Vikings managed to land him 10 picks into Round 2.”
McShay also liked Ty Chandler, whom the Vikings took at 169.
“I have to mention my guy Ty Chandler,” said McShay. “I really wanted to make him Minnesota’s best pick. The UNC running back has 4.38 speed and makes cuts without gearing down. And he’s a smooth pass-catcher out of the backfield. I think he could end up the best value pick at running back in the 2022 class.”
However, Booth only played 23 games and made three starts in two years. In August last year, the Vikings traded him to the Dallas Cowboys. Chandler remains in Minnesota. However, the Vikings have traded for Cam Akers twice, and he’s usurped Chandler’s role as the backup running back each time.
The Vikings ended up with seven picks in 2022. Only four are still with the team.
- Cine (32) played one game for the Buffalo Bills and finished the season with the Philadelphia Eagles.
- Booth (42) played seven games with the Cowboys and made two starts last year.
- Ingram (59) has never had a PFF grade above 60 in three years with the Vikings.
- Brian Asamoah (66) has played 46 games in three years but went from looking like a rising star in Ed Donatell’s defense to a special-teamer.
- Akayleb Evans (118) made 15 starts in 2023. However, the Vikings waived him in November.
- Esezi Otomewo (165) played five games as a rookie in 2022, but Minnesota waived him a year later. The Jacksonville Jaguars picked him up, and he played four games (two starts) for them last year.
- Chandler (169) has 663 rushing yards in three years with the Vikings.
- Vederian Lowe (184) played four games as a rookie before Minnesota traded him to the New England Patriots. Lowe has made 21 starts and played 29 games with the Pats.
- Jalen Nailor (191) made seven starts last year and has 662 receiving yards in 38 games.
- Nick Muse (227) spent most of his time in Minnesota on the practice squad. However, he played in 16 games and finished the year with the Eagles.
Minnesota’s first and last picks from 2022 end this season as Super Bowl champions. However, the Vikings leave the 2022 draft without much value. Players like Asamoah and Evans may have played better in Donatell’s Vic Fangio-inspired system. Minnesota ultimately benefitted from hiring Brian Flores, but it may have hurt the 2022 class.
More pertinently, the Vikings passed on Jordan Davis and Kyle Hamilton.
Drafting Davis would have meant taking a defensive lineman in the first round for the first time since Sharrif Floyd in 2013. Davis has averaged a 69.5 PFF grade as part of Philadelphia’s defensive line that held Patrick Mahomes to an 11.4 QBR in the Super Bowl.
Hamilton played at Notre Dame and would have become Harrison Smith’s heir apparent. Injury concerns likely factored into Minnesota’s decision not to draft him.
Looking back on the 2022 draft, the Vikings felt they may have rushed the process because of the regime change. Minnesota hired Adofo-Mensah on January 26, 2022, and he hired Kevin O’Connell on February 16 after the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl.
“When I entered the building [we were] trying to compete [and had an] aging roster, salary cap [problems],” Adofo-Mensah said during training camp last year. “As we all know from that [Colts] game, it starts with one play, one drive, and you build.
“I think at times I might have been guilty of trying to maybe have a 33-point play all at once,” Adofo-Mensah said. “And I think once I identified that, I kind of … you’ve seen since then [the Vikings draft process] has been really foundationally just taking good steps, building to a certain critical point where I think we can compete over the long term.”
O’Connell emphasized that he got the job immediately before the March 1 NFL Combine.
“The Wednesday I was introduced [as coach], the combine might have been a week and a half later,” said O’Connell. “We were compressed for time, trying to trust in building some immediate processes that we believed in and talked about during the interview process.”
Last year, the Vikings traded up for J.J. McCarthy and Dallas Turner. They enter this year’s draft with three picks, one in the first round and two in the fifth. They also should get a compensatory pick for losing Kirk Cousins in free agency.
Adofo-Mensah has gone from trading his first-round pick and drafting 10 players to prioritizing two crucial positions and leaving himself with four picks next season. Is that a direct reaction to the 2022 draft, or how Minnesota’s needs have changed in three years? We may never know.
