The NFL Draft is a crucial event for teams to replenish their roster with young talent, but the Minnesota Vikings’ mistake may have had a significant impact on their performance in recent years.
On Tuesday, Mike Renner of Pro Football Focus released an article highlighting what might be the biggest draft mistake made by the Vikings in recent years.
“It’s notoriously difficult to find a game-changing edge rusher outside of the first round. The Vikings bucked the odds when they got just that in Danielle Hunter with the 88th pick in the 2015 NFL Draft. Since then, however, they’ve tried to catch that same lightning in a bottle almost yearly to no avail.
Year Round Pick Player 2018 4 102 Jalyn Holmes 2020 4 117 D.J. Wonnum 2020 4 130 James Lynch 2021 3 90 Patrick Jones 2021 4 134 Janarius Robinson It was a decision borne out of trust in then-Vikings defensive line coach Andre Patterson, whose track record of developing players is as good as it gets around the league. That’s why 2013 was the last time they spent a top-50 pick on a defensive lineman. That’s not to say those were all bad value picks, per se, but, rather, that they ignored potential impact prospects early on in the draft. That was most notable in 2019 when they took center Garrett Bradbury at No. 18 overall with Jeffery Simmons coming off the board next and a similarly tooled edge rusher to Danielle Hunter in Montez Sweat being the next edge drafted (26th).”
Pro Football Focus may be a bit harsh in their evaluation here. While some of those players have not panned out to be like Hunter, many of them have turned into core rotational players in the NFL and have shown flashes. Nonetheless, the Vikings did pass up great players in the early rounds whom they could’ve paired with Hunter. Instead, they rolled the dice on development. When it’s all said and done, there could’ve been worse mistakes.
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