Matthew Coller: Vikings must move on from 2022 draft

The failed draft has become a fascination but did it hurt their team building efforts?

Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah / Minnesota Vikings

EAGAN — The Minnesota Vikings’ 2022 draft should have its own true crime documentary.

Picture it: The show begins with a first-time general manager known for his analytical prowess trying to test his data-driven powers on the draft after years of cooking up numbers assisting the 49ers and Browns.

Our mysterious former Wall Street man Kwesi Adofo-Mensah makes a series of unorthodox trades on draft day that raise eyebrows in NFL and media circles alike. Does this guy think he can break the game by trading down from No. 12 to 32 without getting a 2023 first-round pick? Are his secret charts guiding such cockamamie behavior? Doing a deal within his own division? Unheard of. Then another trade with the most hated foe, Green Bay? He’s either brilliant or mad!

Flash forward: Two years later, the gentlemen once considered a footbally prodigy is humbled, standing at a lectern answering for his crimes against drafting. He’s peppered with questions about cutting his first-round pick Lewis Cine.

“Bad outcomes can happen from a lot of things, bad decision-making, bad process, bad information, bad implementation when they get here, bad support,” the tall figure says from beneath his retro purple cap.

Has the lead decision maker of this billion-dollar organization changed since this travesty toward the sport? Will he find redemption?

“Everything that I do in the future has some relevance of what I've done in the past,” he says. “These are things I've thought about for a long period of time. I wouldn't say specifically to that trade, but also just more what types of decisions do you need to make?”

The postscript is open ended. Whether the main subject of this True Football Crimes investigation will suffer consequences for his transgression is yet to be seen. We may not know for years. Until we know for sure, his every move will be questioned by the masses.

Of course, like all good true crime features, we have to leave out some key information to make the narrative work. The most notable might be that many draft analysts liked the Vikings’ 2022 draft.

This is what USA Today wrote recapping their selections:

“Cine is a hammerhead downhill safety with violent intentions and the range and athleticism to win all over the field. And in Andrew Booth, Minnesota gets what it desperately needed — a legitimate cornerback who can play off and press, and has the range to match with NFL receivers. LSU's Ed Ingram is an underrated, butt-kicking pulling guard who will fill another huge need, and Brian Asamoah has the traits to make his name as the kind of three-down 'backer the Vikings have expertly cultivated over time."

It might be worth mentioning too that part of the reason the first-rounder Lewis Cine never saw the field and got released on cutdown day was because the Vikings have one of the best safety units in the league and it was entirely built on outliers.

ESPN’s Mike Clay ranked the Vikings’ 2024 safety group the third best in the NFL. It features a sixth-round pick Josh Metellus who was cut out of his first camp and didn’t get a chance to play significant time until his fourth season. Also the player who beat out Cine was a former fourth-round cornerback who converted to safety and struggled in his first full season as a starter in 2022. When Cine got hurt in ‘22, the Vikings signed Theo Jackson, a sixth-rounder from Tennessee who was on the Titans’ practice squad. He was stunningly one of the best defensive players in camp this year.

It is often brought up that star safety Kyle Hamilton could have been selected instead of trading down. It is less often acknowledged that WR Jameson Williams was the player the Lions traded up to acquire. He has 25 catches — one-third the number of Jordan Addison, who the Vikings picked the following season. It could have also been Jordan Davis, PFF’s 44th graded defensive tackle last year against the run. He had just 18 total QB pressures.

They could have taken guard Kenyon Green. He graded as the NFL’s worst pass blocking guard in 2022 and missed all of last season with a shoulder injury. The following pick after that, receiver Jahan Dotson, is already on his second team as well.

Why stop there. The next pick G Zion Johnson ranked 40th of 58 starting guards by PFF. Titans receiver Treylon Burks caught 16 passes in 2023. The 19th overall pick Trevor Penning has played 514 snaps and had a 53.6 PFF grade last year. The 20th pick was QB Kenny Pickett, now Philly’s backup.

Finally at the 21st overall pick we find a star in CB Trent McDuffie.

We can’t make True Football Crime content if the answer to the 2022 Vikings Draft was as simple as: Sometimes things don’t work out in the draft.

All evidence points to that conclusion both within the rest of the ‘22 draft and historically. Remember, the Vikings had the draft of the decade in 2015 by picking Eric Kendricks, Danielle Hunter and Stefon Diggs and then followed that up with Laquon Treadwell, Mackensie Alexander and Willie Beavers in 2016.

The 49ers spent all their draft capital on a quarterback at the top and ended up trading him away before the end of his rookie contract and instead went to the Super Bowl with Mr. Irrelevant.

The Eagles picked Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson and then went to the Super Bowl two years later led in part by the next receiver they selected Devonta Smith.

We could spend the rest of our lives marveling at draft randomness but we need to move onto the next important part of the story: In the following two drafts the Vikings used a second-round pick to acquire a Pro Bowl tight end TJ Hockenson, picked a young star wide receiver, discovered a UDFA starting linebacker, picked a starting corner (who tore his ACL this year), selected a potential future franchise quarterback and made an aggressive trade up for one of the top pass rushing prospects in the draft.

At the same time the Vikings took apart an aging roster with a screwed up cap situation and finagled it into a position where they have millions and millions to spend on free agency around JJ McCarthy next season. They also extended two elite players at their positions and signed three Day 1 free agents this March who will be with them going forward.

How much of the Vikings’ situation was derailed by the 2022 draft? Some of those weaknesses would be stronger had they hit on Cine and second-rounder Andrew Booth Jr. Or maybe they wouldn’t have discovered Metellus or kept UDFA Dwight McGlothern, who shined in camp.

None of this is to say that the Vikings aren’t guilty of having the top of the ‘22 draft go sideways. It’s only to point out that these misses didn’t change the bigger picture and it’s impossible to build a team over multiple seasons without having some things go wrong. The science of the draft is too inexact. Misses have to be factored into the equation with all decision making and roster planning.

Maybe that part wasn’t considered enough in the ‘22 process. Adofo-Mensah admitted to trying to solve all the future problems after he took over with one big swing. He made a comparison to the Vikings’ historic comeback against the Colts.

“When I entered the building, trying to compete, aging roster, salary cap stuff, I think there were times where I felt down 33-0,” Adofo-Mensah said. “As we all know, that game 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.”

It was clear on Thursday that there has been more introspection than indignation inside TCO Performance Center as it pertains to The Lost Draft of ‘22 in attempts to identify what went wrong and avoid it in the future.

“Since then, it's been really foundationally just taking good steps, building to a certain critical point where I think we compete over the long term,” Adofo-Mensah said.

Kevin O’Connell spoke on the side with reporters about the ‘22 draft’s shortcomings as well.

“I always look back on how I’ve handled my role in the draft evaluation process and I think I’ve become more comfortable and confident in our ability to do that with the collaboration of our coaches working in conjunction with Kwesi’s staff,” O’Connell said. “It’s something we feel strongly about it going forward but you can never discount positives or negatives during our experience together hoping to turn it into a better version of our process moving forward.”

The process has noticeably changed in the last two years. They didn’t trade out of the 23rd pick in 2023 and instead took Addison. They were aggressive in landing edge rusher Dallas Turner despite frowns from the analytics community. Defensive coordinator Brian Flores, a former scout, appears to have a significant influence.

Of course, drafting might not be a major determining factor of whether they get from Point A to Point B in the near future. They are short on draft capital next year, meaning free agency decisions will be incredibly vital to stacking the team around McCarthy.

As it pertains to this season, the front office has put a lot of bets on the table with unproven players and a quarterback that they are hoping outperforms any previous season.

“You're trying to hit that magical craps role where a lot of things happen together at once,” Adofo-Mensah said. “With your veteran players, they're going to be a little bit more known what they are, their play histories, things like that. Young players have a little bit more of an unknown and so when you're putting together a team, you don't know from the five, six, seven…who of those two or three are going to step forward, but you're counting on two or three of those people to step forward.”

As everything goes with the NFL, the 2022 draft’s failure will go long forgotten if the Vikings are able to surround McCarthy with talent and compete with the beasts of the NFC North regularly. If they struggle to do so, it will continue to be front of mind for many.

And with no playoff wins to their names in two years, there are no free passes. No matter how random the 2022 draft may have been, it’s the job of Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell to work around it and build a winning team. Whether they can do that from top to bottom in the coming season/offseasons will ultimately decide where the organization goes, not two individual missed draft picks.

“Let's just put one foot in front of the other and just make one decision after the other,” Adofo-Mensah said.

Additional notes

— Adofo-Mensah said that Myles Gaskin, currently on the practice squad, won the kick returning job. Kene Nwangwu was cut by the Vikings on Tuesday. The Saints picked him up but he failed a physical.

— KOC explained that Gaskin was able to do more things as it pertained to special teams like being a tackler or blocker if called upon.

— The Vikings waived Jaren Hall. KAM said they hope to get him to the practice squad. They signed journeyman Brett Rypien, who had a strong preseason for the Bears.

— After waiving 2023 seventh-round pick DeWayne McBride, the Vikings signed RB Zavier Scott. He was on the Colts’ practice squad last year.

— The Vikings also cut WR Jeshaun Jones and added T Ricke Lee III, who played six games for the Panthers last year.