What are you sure of?

I agree with most of your assessments, just wondering if they will acquire the needed picks to get all these needs? No draft guru at all, what will they get for trade backs and trading Z and Cook?

I don't think you'll see a high pick here. Short of a sauce gardner type falling, the analytics says you don't get a ton of value in the 1st where we're drafting.. I do think they take one in the later rounds though.




Definitely agree on a developmental pick here. Again, I doubt we see a high one, especially with JJ on the roster. It doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of resource allocation.

I disagree there. Im not saying I would do it on this class, but cough cough last year Williams or even if Wilson fell, thats huge having 5 years on a possible stud rookie, while your paying Hock and JJ. This "3rd option" guy needs to be a guy your not paying big bucks but can produce big and keep the defense honest off JJ. You better make damn sure you hit on that guy but that is literally the missing piece to having a top 5 offense most likely. KJ isnt that guy, sure maybe Nailor is, and yes you could possibly find that guy in round 3 but I disagree that possibly using a high pick on a WR is not a smart.

I look around the NFL at some of the best offenses and have to disagree with you here.  SF comes to mind as a team without an elite QB that wants to rely on the run, and they have 3 good to great receiving options.  Not all 3 produce huge numbers, since there is only so many pass attempts to go around, but them being on the field together benefits the other receivers even when they aren't catching a pass.  On top of that, the threat of Aiyuk, Samuel and Kittle opens up the  SF's run game considerably.  You see the same thing with Dallas and their 3 good to great receiving threats.  

Maybe Dallas with Cooper, but not Dallas last year thats why they lost. But agreed you look at the Niners and Eagles come to mind right off the rip. Bengals as well. Then you could also go the Chiefs route where they have Kelce obviously, then a bunch of guys who play their roles. 

Yep, I have multiple posts in draft status ready to submit once he makes his pick(s) just to cover all of the bases.  

The only thing I'm "sure" of with a 100% degree of certainty is that I will be initially disappointed by either a selection, the value received in a trade down/up or some combination thereof. In 2022, I didn't like the value received for the initial Rd 1 trade down or the selections of Cine, Ingram & Asamoah and some of the Day 3 selections. In 2021, while I loved the initial trade down in Rd 1 to pick up add'l 3rd Rd picks, I really didn't like the Round 3 selections overall. There's always going to be something that I will initially scratch my head about and it doesn't matter if it's Rick or Kwesi making the selections/trades...

...and sometimes I do find myself eathing a healthy portion of crow months/years later...

In addition, here are some potential "Kwesi Draft tendencies" that, while we only have 1 Draft to go on, it's not unreasonable to think will occur again in 2023...

Trades:
Janik Eckardt wrote this last week on the Vikings Territory website (link): "Adofo-Mensah traded up twice and down four times in his first draft as general manager. According to Pro Football Focus, no other franchise in the league has facilitated more draft-day trades than the Vikings since 2011. The purple team leads that category with 44, three more than the Patriots, who rank second with 41."

While it's always possible the Vikings will just go BPA and "sit" on each of their 5 Draft picks, I think if you shake your Magic 8-Ball and ask the question, "Will Kwesi make at least 1 trade during the Draft?", this will be the reply:



I think we all should have the Rich Hill Draft Trade Value Chart on-hand during the entire Draft - here's a link: link

Attacking Roster Holes
Will Ragatz wrote about the Vikings 2022 pre-Draft positional needs on 4/28/22, one day before Round 1 on 4/29/22 (link) and listed the following positions as the Top 4 "needs": CB, EDGE, IOL, S...

...and although Kwesi didn't address the EDGE position (I really wished the pick at #59 was USC EDGE Drake Jackson intead of Ed Ingram), he did address 3 of those 4 "needs" with their first 5 selections: S Lewis Cine, CB Andrew Booth, Jr., IOL Ed Ingram, LB Brian Asamoah & CB Akayleb Evans, and you could argue he really attacked the consensus top "need" among most fans/experts which was CB.

Alec Lewis and the rest of The Athletic Staff recently wrote about the Vikings key position needs heading into the 2023 Draft (link) and listed these three positions as the top "needs": CB, DT & LB. I would anticipate Kwesi to do something similar to last year and attack one or more of those positions early in next week's Draft.

Prioritizing Athleticism
If you go to the RAS (Relative Athletic Score) website (link) and just look at the Vikings 2022 Draft class, 5 out of the 10 players (50%) they drafted had green, or "elite" level RAS scores:



Here is the current Vikings 2023 Top 30 Visit tracker (includes local Pro Days and private/virtual meetings) along with their RAS scores:



Similar to the 2022 Draft, 15 out of the 30 (50%) players the Vikings have met with in the pre-draft visit process for the upcoming Draft have green or "elite" level RAS athletic testing scores, including 10 out of the 18 (56%) on defense. 

As of late Feb 2023, there were 1,920 players on NFL rosters who posted a RAS and the average RAS score for those players was 7.16 (link) and the average RAS score for the players the Vikings selected in 2022 was 7.92, and the average RAS for the Top 30 prospects the Vikings have met with prior to the 2023 Draft is 8.00...

...Kwesi and the Vikings do prefer prospects with average RAS scores above the NFL average. 

Prioritizing Power 5 Programs
If you look at the players the Vikings drafted in 2022 (from above image of the 2022 RAS scores), you'll notice the universities they attended at the time of the Draft are all "Power 5" schools (SEC, BIG10, ACC, BIG XII, PAC-12). 

If you look at the Browns drafts in 2020/2021 (link, when Kwesi was part of the organization), they drafted a total of 15 players and 13 out of the 15 (or 87%) were drafted from Power 5 programs. Last season when Kwesi was gone from Cleveland, that number dropped to (78%) when they selected 7 out of 9 prospects from Power 5 programs. 

There was a similar trend in San Francisco during Kwesi's time as a Director of Football Research & Development: from 2017-2019 (link) when Kwesi was in that position, 22 out of the 27 players (or 81%) the 49ers selected during that time were from Power 5 programs. In the year's since (2020-2022), only 14 out of the 22 players they selected (or 64%) were from Power 5 programs - and San Francisco took QB Trey Lance out of NDSU #3 overall in 2021. 

While we don't know how much "influence" Kwesi actually had on the Draftday decisions for the Browns/49ers during his time in those organizations, there is a noticeable trend of focusing on prospects from Power 5 programs when you combine that with Kwesi's first Draft in Minnesota last year.