Vikings’ roster cuts put a harsh spotlight on their 2022 NFL draft again

The Vikings made J.J. McCarthy and Dallas Turner the 66th and 67th first-round picks in franchise history this spring. Before drafting those two players, the team had made 65 first-round selections in its first 63 drafts.

Three players in the group never played a game for the Vikings: 1963 first-rounder Jim Dunaway went to the AFL as a second-round pick of the Bills, playing nine seasons in Buffalo before ending his career on the Dolphins’ undefeated 1972 team. Receiver Jack Snow, the Vikings’ 1965 first-round pick, was traded to the Rams to begin an 11-year career there before ever playing a game in Minnesota. And Dimitrius Underwood, the Vikings’ second first-round pick in 1999, was waived after leaving the team in training camp as a rookie.

Of the remaining 62 first-rounders who suited up for the Vikings, running back Leo Hayden played the fewest regular-season games for the team, confined to special teams duty for seven weeks in 1971. Lewis Cine, the 2022 first-round pick whom the Vikings released on Tuesday, has the second-fewest games on that list, with 10.

Perhaps Cine, whether on another team’s active roster or an NFL practice squad, will harness his impressive physical gifts and revive his career two years after the Vikings took him 32nd overall. If his career in Minnesota is finished, its postscript will come with disclaimers: the compound left leg fracture that wiped out his rookie season after four weeks, the marked shift in defensive schemes after Brian Flores replaced Ed Donatell as defensive coordinator in 2023. It will do little to soften the fact that Cine, who was Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s first pick after the Vikings general manager traded back 20 spots in a deal with the Lions, made the NFL waiver wire before he made a starting lineup.

The Vikings’ decision to trade the 12th overall pick to the Lions was a stunner that cut against traditional NFL thinking, and Adofo-Mensah knew it would attract scrutiny as soon as he agreed to it. If Jameson Williams, the receiver the Lions acquired with the Vikings’ pick, enjoys a breakout season in his third year with Detroit, the deal will be revisited under an even harsher glare. “Believe me, the gravity of that was not lost on me,” Adofo-Mensah said after the second day of the 2022 draft. And the decision to cut Cine came just after the Vikings traded cornerback Andrew Booth Jr., the 42nd pick in that draft, to the Cowboys.

Ed Ingram, whom the Vikings took 59th overall after selecting Cine and Booth, heads into his third year as the Vikings’ starting right guard but maintains a tenuous grip on the job. Brian Asamoah II, the 66th pick in the draft, backs up undrafted free agent Ivan Pace Jr. at inside linebacker. Cornerback Akayleb Evans, a fourth-round pick in 2022, lost his starting job at the end of last season. He sits behind three free-agent additions (Byron Murphy Jr., Shaq Griffin and Stephon Gilmore) on the Vikings depth chart.

At this point, perhaps the only way for the Vikings’ 2022 draft to be remembered fondly is some combination of a resurgence for Asamoah and Evans as well as meaningful contributions from Day 3 picks (running back Ty Chandler, wide receiver Jalen Nailor and tight end Nick Muse) to a competitive team. But if the Vikings’ approach to that draft showed things would be different under Adofo-Mensah, so did the way they moved on from it.

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Even though Cine’s and Booth’s short stays in Minnesota were affected by injuries, the chief reason for their prompt exits was the fact they couldn’t distinguish themselves in a secondary where there were jobs to be had. Josh Metellus, a sixth-round holdover from the 2020 draft, and Theo Jackson, a 2022 practice-squad pickup, leapt over Cine on the depth chart. A year after drafting Booth, the Vikings went to the third round for another corner (Mekhi Blackmon), before drafting Khyree Jackson in the fourth round this year and signing five cornerbacks in training camp. But Adofo-Mensah didn’t waste time dispatching Cine and Booth at a time when some of his counterparts might have hung onto their former draft picks in an attempt at vindication.

Using Pro Football Reference’s Approximate Value metric, which compares the production of different players across positions and eras, Cine is tied with Hayden as the least productive first-round pick to play a game for the Vikings. Laquon Treadwell, the receiver the Vikings took 23rd overall in 2016, is eighth on the list. But while Treadwell never posted more than 302 receiving yards in a season in Minnesota and caught just two touchdown passes, he played 53 games over the course of his full rookie contract. 2004 first-round pick Kenechi Udeze, who had only 11 sacks with the Vikings, got four full seasons; Troy Williamson, the receiver the Vikings drafted seventh overall to replace Randy Moss, got three.

At the time of the deal with the Lions and the Cine pick, Adofo-Mensah referenced his background as a commodities trader on Wall Street, where he’d developed a stomach for uncertainty by knowing his decisions would be critiqued within seconds. “They keep score, very quickly,” he said. “There’s a humility I have because you spent half of your week being wrong.”

History, it seems, is unlikely to view Adofo-Mensah’s first Vikings draft favorably. His top two picks are no longer on the roster, while his next three are fighting to keep jobs. The Vikings are projected to have just four picks in next spring’s draft, and Adofo-Mensah’s first two drafts followed two Rick Spielman drafts with a pair of stars and little depth.

If the deal he made to draft Cine defied convention, though, so did the speed with which he moved on from a mistake (and perhaps the entente he created with Lions GM Brad Holmes facilitated the T.J. Hockenson trade seven months after the Cine deal). Adofo-Mensah showed he won’t hang onto underperforming assets out of sentiment; he’ll hope the remaining picks from his first three draft classes yield some winners.