We're just a few days removed from the Super Bowl. The Scouting Combine is a couple weeks away. The NFL league year is a month away and the draft is more than two months away.
Mock draft: Do Vikings have this wide receiver in their future with pick No. 23?
That's the prediction in the first post-Super Bowl mock draft from ESPN's Todd McShay, who notes that defense could still be a priority but that wide receiver might offer the best value relative to fit for the Vikings.
February 15, 2023 at 7:27PM
So what do we call this time on the football calendar? Speculation Season.
Let the guesswork begin, in the absence of definitive knowledge, as to how things are going to play out in the next few months.
For the Vikings, that means another offseason (for now) wondering what Aaron Rodgers might do, and his reflection on Tuesday "18 years, man. Green Bay is always gonna be home" could be read in a lot of different ways.
More so, this offseason is about self-improvement. After a 13-4 season that included an otherworldly 11-0 record in one-score games, the Vikings have multiple things on their to-do list if they even want to come close to replicating that record.
Fixing the defense is the top priority, and the introduction of Brian Flores on Wednesday as defensive coordinator was a step in that direction.
Will Flores have an influx of talent with which to work? That's perhaps a bigger question, and one that will be answered as the Vikings navigate free agency and the draft — which I talked about on Wednesday's Daily Delivery podcast.
In terms of the draft, the Vikings currently have just four picks — No. 23 overall in the first round, plus selections in the third, fourth and fifth rounds. They might add to that with compensatory picks and/or trades, but that's the meager capital right now.
That puts a significant amount of pressure on the No. 23 pick. In his first mock draft since the Super Bowl, ESPN's Todd McShay has the Vikings taking USC wide receiver Jordan Addison at that spot.
His reasoning is sound: Adam Thielen isn't getting any younger (he'll be 33 in August), Justin Jefferson could use another game-breaker to take pressure off him and the WR value might be better than the value on defense at No. 23 even there is plenty of need.
Flores might prefer using that pick on defense, but remember: head coach Kevin O'Connell is an offensive coach, and the need to add more skill and youth on that side of the ball should be evident to him.
There will be plenty of steps — and revised mock drafts — between now and the actual selections. But it sure seems like wide receiver or an impact defensive player are the two biggest areas of immediate need.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
