EAGAN — Drafting a quarterback is like looking for a new house. It’s a huge investment and you’re going to be miserable if you pick the wrong one. So you do tons of research, ask experts, visit the house, drive around the neighborhood, investigate the crime, schools, its history and try to check off every box of your needs/wants. Yet, no matter how perfect the place might appear, you don’t really know how it’s going to work out until you move in. Its foundation might suddenly crack or the neighbors might party until 2 AM every night or it might be perfect in almost every way. And just like drafting a quarterback, you probably have the same odds trying to chase the perfect home as buying the first one that’s available in your price range on Zillow.
Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell understands that there is no perfect science to finding a quarterback — even with his playing/coaching experience and all the tools at teams’ disposal, from scouts’ eyes to interviews to cognition tests that seem to be all the rage.
“Going back every year that you’ve studied the draft, I’ve been right on guys and I’ve been wrong on guys,” O’Connell said on Thursday.
That’s the case with everyone in the NFL. The New England Patriots were geniuses for drafting Tom Brady — not so much for Michael Bishop or Rohan Davey, who they took the year before and year after Brady. The Bills brilliantly defied the college stats to take star Josh Allen while many other stat-busting first-round picks like Dan McGwire, Kyle Boller and Blaine Gabbert went sideways. JaMarcus Russell was deemed a perfect prospect. Patrick Mahomes was scrutinized for his playing style.
The Jets keep picking highly regarded prospects like Mark Sanchez, Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson and having them bust. The Chiefs took one quarterback in the first round since 1983 and it turned out to be Mahomes, who was picked in a lower slot than all three Jets misses.
History might suggest that the Vikings should pick any house that has four walls, a two-car garage and enough closet space. In other words, nobody thinks picking a shack in the fourth round is going to give them good odds to take a winning quarterback but there’s a good argument to suggest that all QBs evaluated as first-round prospects have pretty even odds to succeed.
But there’s a problem with that line of thinking. Try telling your family that you used Google to buy the new house because it has equal odds of being good as the one you’ve researched through the roof. If the Vikings are going to draft a quarterback, everyone has to be on board.
“I don’t think you sacrifice it being the right player,” O’Connell said. “Regardless of the when, the where, the why, the how, you can’t sacrifice that. You have to have ultra belief and connection on making that decision because it is such an important decision.”
So what does the right player look like?
The mansion prospects — Bryce Young, CJ Stround and Anthony Richardson — are being projected to be picked in the top 5-7 slots. There’s one path to getting into that range, which is trading with the Arizona Cardinals in the No. 3 overall spot. But it’s hard to see the Vikings being able to match that price. When the 49ers traded up for Trey Lance, they sent the 12th overall pick, a third-rounder and two future firsts to get the third pick in the 2021 draft. There are teams with oodles of draft capital who could out-bid them.
“I do think there is a lot to like about this year’s class with a lot of names that are being discussed as potential high picks,” O’Connell said.
Maybe someone will drop. Lamar Jackson’s average mock position was 18th and he fell to 32nd in 2018. Have you heard about Aaron Rodgers’ draft-day fall?
If we don’t see another Rodgers-esque slide, that leaves players like Will Levis and Hendon Hooker — the mid-sized ranch, if we’re going to keep going with the housing comparisons. Both are being mocked in the first round but neither is considered a flawless prospect. Levis’s numbers were unimpressive last year and Hooker’s age brings question to whether he can develop into a star. Whether the Vikings would invest in them depends heavily on what they are looking for in their next QB.
O’Connell was asked about his ideal prospect QB.
“Playing the position you have to have things and traits you look for and the things you think can carry over,” O’Connell said. “Things like accuracy, things like toughness, things like having the ability to process and see the whole field and read with your feet and eyes. Those things translate. The guys that sometimes naturally do it jump off the tape, whether they’re in spread systems or more pro-style systems. But then you can find it. You can find those subtle snaps where guys do things they may not even know they were doing in the moment that I think translate. That is one of the cool things why I put so much into every single year.”
Could we be reading into it too much that O’Connell mentioned spread systems, which is one of the biggest criticisms of Hooker? Or that the first word was “accuracy” and that’s one of Hooker’s best traits? Toughness is Levis’s calling card though. And are we forgetting Stanford’s pocket passer Tanner McKee as a potential prospect?
“We believe evaluating that position is understanding the different aspects of the game that that person succeeds at to give their value,” GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said. “[We] have to be on the same page as to what that is and how we are going to use that person. That is how you start and give yourself a chance to succeed. Everything else after that I believe is secondary.”
Reading between the lines of a pre-draft press conference is tricky business but we can safely say the Vikings are telling the truth when they talk about house hunting in this year’s QB class. The Vikings restructuring Kirk Cousins rather than extending him put them on the map to potentially draft a QB and both O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah used the word “ideal” to describe the possibility of a rookie quarterback sitting behind Cousins to develop. But if they don’t take a quarterback, that means they either didn’t have the opportunity or the front office couldn’t come to an agreement on the next front door to the franchise and that’s not going to be for lack of research.
“I use every year as a real process to go back and say, ‘Hey man, I was wrong on this one, right on this one and really try to figure out the why,” O’Connell said. “Collectively can we build some of those hits and misses into our process moving forward to try and go ahead and identify that guy we do have that belief in?”
What happens if they don’t believe in that guy?
“These aren’t things you just decide in the moment,” Adofo-Mensah said. “You have to have plans, you have to have a strategy, you have to have different ways of getting to that answer. We’ve had these conversations. They are ongoing. There are a lot of different avenues in terms of addressing that position. I wouldn’t necessarily box us into just one.”
Picking a QB in 2024 could have its benefits. They will have more draft capital to move up if needed and they will be free of Cousins’ dead cap the following year (assuming he walks in free agency). The Vikings will also be able to assess another class of veteran quarterbacks. Every year there seems to be more available veterans than ever before.
So house hunting may not be an exact science but the Vikings aren’t stuck looking in one neighborhood. We will, however, know very soon if they see anyone from this year’s class as the “right player.”
“It’s the most important position in this sport and we’ll treat it with that kind of importance,” Adofo-Mensah said.
