The Minnesota Vikings made six trades during the 2022 NFL Draft but the most surprising may have been their deal with the Green Bay Packers.
The trade was the first between the two NFC North rivals since 2008, but unlike when the Vikings traded up to grab John David Booty, this deal could work out in their favor.
ESPN’s Seth Walder ranked his top trades of this year’s draft and the Vikings’ deal with the Packers, which sent the 34th overall pick to Green Bay in exchange for picks No. 53 and 59, checks in at fourth on the list.
While the Packers used their selection to take North Dakota State receiver Christian Watson, Walder believes the Vikings return exceeded that value by a third-round pick.
The Vikings used the draft capital received in the deal with the Packers to trade up to the 42nd overall pick to select Clemson cornerback Andrew Booth Jr. and pick LSU guard Ed Ingram with the 59th overall pick.
“Critics will say this is bad because Minnesota let the Packers fill a critical need with the selection of Watson,” Walder reasoned. “This is faulty logic because that leaves out the context that Green Bay let Minnesota have two picks that were collectively worth more than what they used on Watson, plus the Packers might have traded up and gotten Watson from someone else anyway.”
The logic matches what Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said in an interview with KFAN’s Paul Allen, where he defended his decision to deal the 12th overall pick to another divisional rival in the Detroit Lions.
“You can’t control who picks up the phone to call you and sometimes the team in your division is the team that is the best bidder on the market,” Adofo-Mensah explained. “I think what people don’t understand is [that] they call other teams. So there’s a high probability … that if I don’t do this deal with them, which is good deal for us, they call and do it with a team right behind me,”
To Adofo-Mensah’s credit, this scenario played out with their first-round pick. After the Vikings traded down from pick No. 12 so the Lions could select Jameson Williams, the Houston Texans traded down from pick No. 13. If the Vikings had not traded down with the Lions, there’s a chance Detroit would have moved up to get Williams anyway, which would have left the Vikings with no benefit.
Walder saw this and commended the Vikings’ willingness to make trades with teams within their division and how it helped Minnesota benefit from the Packers’ desire to trade up for Watson.
“A willingness to deal with divisional opponents is a good trait for a team to have (though it can amplify an error, as it did for the Packers here.)”
Time will tell if the deal pans out but it adds another interesting wrinkle to the Vikings’ rivalry with the Packers.
