Brass balls it and pick the old miss DT Harris. Completely rework that room.

Con: No WR, token C with no actual chance at 235, and IMO Banks could have been had with a trade down. I don't like the value of Bredeson at 159 but I'll forgive that because we still got Claiborne.

Pro: Double-down with Orange at DT, Golday, Claiborne.

Better than any of the Kwesi drafts, but room for improvement.

RS_Express wrote:

Con: No WR, no C, and IMO Banks could have been had with a trade down. I don't like the value of Bredeson at 159 but I'll forgive that because we still got Claiborne.
Pro: Double-down with Orange at DT, Golday, Claiborne.
Better than any of the Kwesi drafts, but room for improvement.

Hey we picked a center. Just gotta give them time.

AGRforever wrote:

Hey we picked a center. Just gotta give them time.

LOL Just edited that post to reflect their selection of Jurgens 2.0.

RS_Express wrote:

LOL Just edited that post to reflect their selection of Jurgens 2.0.

Oh ya big grumpalumpagus. They took a center!!

I think we have a lot to learn in the next few months, and even more starting in September. None of these picks really matter until they actually are DOING Vikings things....

I mean, as fans, we focus on the positives mostly with the draft selections and then learn over the next 2+ years where it all stands and if they'll be contributors.

StickierBuns wrote:

I mean, as fans, we focus on the positives mostly with the draft selections and then learn over the next 2+ years where it all stands and if they'll be contributors.

You must have several posters here blocked.

It’s too early to judge the players. But I do think there are some things we can take away from how this draft was managed. 

Maybe the most impressive thing was that they didn’t seem to panic. They let the board fall to them. I think many of us would’ve taken our RB two rounds earlier. Vikings seemed to know that RBs would fall in this draft. Outside of the batshit crazy Kaelon Black pick, no RB was taken on day 2. Singleton and Emmett Johnson went in round 5. Vikings were patient and when they saw RB-needy Seattle coming up in the 6th, they jumped ahead of them for their guy. Last year, we were the team that got jumped. Twice. 

I also like the attention paid to versatility, fit and value. Banks can play any position on the line. Tiernan is depth at tackle and guard. Golday is an off-ball LB and AVG depth. We took a nose for the first time in years, but didn’t burn a 1st rounder on a two-down player. Bredeson is our FB and figures in at TE as well. 

Grades from NFL.com

Grades:

• Day 1: B+

• Day 2: C+

• Day 3: A-

Analysis:

• Needing help on the defensive line, the Vikings took a chance on Banks' excellent combination of size and agility, despite his injury issues, which reportedly include a broken foot suffered at the combine. Golday has size and athleticism but will need to be a better player than fellow linebacker CJ Allen (taken 53rd overall by the Colts) and safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren (picked 58th overall by the Browns) to prove he was the best value. Minnesota bolstered its defensive line again in Round 3 with the powerful Orange (aka "Big Citrus"), found a swing tackle in Tiernan and took the physical Thomas over available prospects Kamari Ramsey and Zakee Wheatley.

• I love Bredeson going to the Vikings as a potential replacement for valued fullback C.J. Ham, who retired this year, though Bredeson was picked a bit earlier than I thought he'd be, given his injury history and the position's value. The fifth-rounder received from Philadelphia for quarterback Sam Howell turned into an excellent value in Demmings, who has the size and athleticism to be an NFL starter despite the lower level of competition he faced in college. Claiborne's the speed back Minnesota needed to boost its running back production; he deserved to be picked at least one round earlier. The Vikings should have added a center and a wideout in this draft, but they waited until Round 7 for Gerhardt and did not select a receiver.

Analysis: Vikings value experience, explosiveness in building 2026 draft class

Mike Sholiton has been with the Vikings for 22 seasons and has been their college scouting director for the past five. Late on the afternoon of Saturday, April 26, he said the Vikings’ 2026 draft was perhaps his most enjoyable in Minnesota.

“It’s been fun just kind of watching Rob [Brzezinski] step into a new role,” Sholiton said. “In the immediate aftermath of the news of Kwesi [Adofo-Mensah] getting let go, right after the Senior Bowl, there was a lot of uncertainty.

“And what was really awesome to see is Rob and ‘KO’ [Kevin O’Connell], and the combined leadership, steering the ship and putting people in positions to be the best versions of themselves.

“Every one of us needed to take on just a little bit more. It was really fun to see Rob, who’s always been in those meetings, kind of captain the ship. For as much time as he’s been with the organization, it’s been really cool to see him and ‘KO’ bringing all the staffs together.”

The Vikings’ Jan. 31 decision to fire Adofo-Mensah after four seasons as their general manager stemmed from his struggles as the chief executive of a football department where scouts, coaches, analysts and salary-cap managers all need to work together. Fissures across the department can become especially harmful during the draft, when evaluating the value and fit of a draft prospect requires cohesiveness from all four facets of a team’s football operation.

Adofo-Mensah’s four drafts had produced only eight players who started at least one season for the Vikings. It meant the Vikings entered the 2026 draft with “a lot of needs,” as Brzezinski put it this month, and they seemed intent on finding players who could contribute relatively quickly.

“Such a big thing in our league is having a path for your draft picks to play, especially your early picks,” Brzezinski said April 20. “You want them on the field, and that’s ideal.

" But there’s also a world where you have to identify what the role is [in] Year 1 but also what the bigger picture is down the line. And so, it’s always a balance.”

We’ll know in the coming weeks whether Brzezinski will get the chance to spearhead another draft, or whether the Vikings will hire a different GM. But if his collegiality was a highlight of the 2026 draft, the class of players the Vikings selected are a reflection of his philosophy.

The Vikings’ 2026 draft class is made up exclusively of 2025 college seniors. It’s also stocked with athletic ability, as the team sought to restock a veteran roster with youthful speed and strength. If the Vikings struck the balance they sought, it might depend on how successfully they pursued both experience and explosiveness.

The Relative Athletic Score (RAS) metric rates a player on a scale of 0 to 10 based on his height, weight and combine testing data relative to historical benchmarks for players at his position. Of the nine players the Vikings drafted, four — Caleb Banks, Jake Golday, Caleb Tiernan and Chuck Demmings — have RAS scores above 9.0. Banks’ 9.83 score was the 22nd-best among 2,278 defensive tackles since 1987, while Golday’s 9.85 RAS score ranks 53rd of 3,480 linebackers.

The Vikings have leaned on veteran defenders who have had time to master the nuances of Brian Flores’ check-based system, and young players typically have needed time to develop before assuming larger roles in the defense.

But it has meant they are relying on older defenders with larger contracts and fewer remaining years of their primes. The Vikings traded Jonathan Greenard to Philadelphia for third-round picks in 2026 and ’27 after the edge rusher sought a pay raise this offseason, and while Harrison Smith has not yet made a decision about whether to retire or return for a 15th season, the Vikings could be preparing for life without the safety for the first time since they selected him on April 26, 2012.

Athletic young players with enough experience and acumen to adjust quickly to the NFL could provide a counterbalance.

Eight of their picks will be at least 23 by the start of the regular season; two of them, Max Bredeson and Gavin Gerhardt, are older than J.J. McCarthy, with Tiernan just three days younger than the QB the Vikings drafted two years ago.

Sholiton hypothesized “you might see that more and more in the new world we’re going into,” where Name, Image and Likeness deals mean players can make more money by staying in college than they might as NFL rookies. If that happens, though, “there’s more opportunities for players to get that extra year of seasoning and to be that much more ready to play professionally.” Sholiton said.

“I don’t know that was a plan for us going into the draft. It’s just sort of how the board fell,” he said. “But when you look at a number of these guys, with multiyear captains: Max Bredeson at Michigan was a multiyear captain, Gavin Gerhardt in the seventh round [was a] three-time captain at Cincinnati.

“These are veteran players that have a lot of experience, that you’re getting them an extra year into their development, so that might make them even more ready to step in and compete in their first year with the Vikings.”

The Vikings could be waiting until training camp to see Banks on the field as he recovers from his twice-broken foot, and Golday missed the East-West Shrine Bowl after suffering an undisclosed injury last November. But they will look for reinforcements from the four defensive players they took in the first three rounds, while Tiernan gets a chance to develop into a swing tackle that could provide depth for now behind Christian Darrisaw and Brian O’Neill.

The draft is, among other things, a means of cost control that helps NFL teams keep their payrolls under the league’s salary cap, and when he discussed the Greenard trade on Friday, Brzezinski didn’t mince words about the Vikings’ need to curtail their cap expenditures.

“We want to keep all our players, and we want all our players to be happy, but we have to allocate our resources the best that we see fit,” Brzezinski said.

“We’ve spent a lot of money the last few years, and and this spending from a salary-cap standpoint is not sustainable. Regardless of what people say, the salary cap is real. You might not be paying the bill the very day that you’re write the check, but it comes due."

It was a philosophy shaped by Brzezinski’s 34 years in NFL salary-cap management, and it guided his approach at the helm of the Vikings’ ad hoc front office, as the team tried to rebound from years of meager drafts.

If the Vikings decide to make Brzezinski the GM after their search, he will likely be praised for his ability to build consensus among coaches, scouts and cap managers. Those departments had all felt the stress of the team’s recent draft futility.

No matter what happens with the GM search, the philosophy that drove the Vikings’ offseason, with larger voices for coaches and scouts and a renewed emphasis on finding affordable starters through the draft, figures to continue.

“When we pick a player, it’s not just, ‘I saw this guy.’ It’s, ‘We saw this guy. This is our pick,’ ” Sholiton said. “And a lot of people felt a sense of ownership about every player that we added into the into the process.”

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