Inside the minds of every team picking before the Vikings

A look at each club's goals that either could or won't be trading with the Vikings

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By Matthew Coller

Robert Kraft stood outside on the balcony of the Ritz Carlton in Orlando with his hands in his pockets shrugging and fighting off a coy smile as New England Patriots reporters asked him whether he would be willing to trade out of the No. 3 overall pick. Per The Athletic’s Chad Graff, Kraft said that fans want a quarterback but sometimes it makes sense to make a move.

Was he being….Krafty? Or was he preparing snarling Boston sports fans for a move down?

If you look at the Boston media’s coverage of a potential QB draft pick or trade down, you’ll find that they are looking for five first-round picks, Justin Jefferson and rights to whichever of Kevin O’Connell’s kids is the best athlete. If the Patriots moved out of selecting either Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels or JJ McCarthy without winning the trade by 10,000 Jimmy Johnson Draft Value Chart points, Justice Alan Page in his prime and US Bank Stadium shipped to Foxborough, then it’s no deal.

The question is whether Senior Kraft feels the same way.

There is a pretty sound argument for the Patriots trading down. That case starts with the fact that their depth chart is something straight out of the UFL. New England is currently running KJ Osborn, Kendrick Bourne, JuJu Smith-Schuster, DeMario Douglas and Tyquan Thornton as their receiving corps. Their offensive line graded 29th by PFF in pass blocking. Which quarterback is going to thrive under those circumstances?

The Patriots are in position to have their cake and eat it too. If they trade with the Vikings, they could still pick a quarterback but without the same level of commitment as the No. 3 overall selection. Let’s say they landed from Minnesota No. 11, 23 and the 2025 first-round pick. Well, that would mean they could pick someone if a QB is still there at 23 or take two offensive players in a stacked draft and grab Spencer Rattler later and then still have plans to take a quarterback at the top of the 2025 draft. With their present lineup and division, picking No. 3 overall again in 2025 is realistic — except they would also have another first-rounder from the Vikings.

If Bobbo Kraft was only grinning at the owner’s meetings because he was laughing at the idea that they would take anyone except Daniels, Maye or McCarthy, then what?

Arizona seems to be begging someone to trade them the farm and that tracks because their roster might be worse than New England’s outside of Kyler Murray. The veteran quarterback is surrounded by such superstar weapons as Greg Dortch and Geoff Swaim. Those are real people who caught double-digit passes for the Cardinals last year.

While they would be giving up a chance at the next Larry Fitzgerald in Marvin Harrison Jr., this draft is so stocked with wide receivers that the ninth best receiver on PFF’s top 300 big board was in the top 50 overall prospects. The Cards already have pick 27, so they could walk away from the first round with three potential impact players at key spots if they traded with the Vikings. That seems pretty reflective of the way the Lions nailed last year’s draft — by having a bunch of top-50 picks.

Still, the Vikings would be asking Arizona to pass on potential superstars in favor of getting multiple players and lemme tell ya what has a good chance of coming back to haunt them: Someone else picking Harrison Jr. If they want to make Kyler Murray happier than the day a new Call of Duty video game drops, they will stick at No. 4 and take a shiny new toy for him.

Getting inside the mind of Jim Harbaugh and the Los Angeles Chargers is a tough task because….Jim Harbaugh. Would he prefer to just take an offensive lineman and run inside zone 47 times per game and be a happy man? Would he hold a grudge against that team in purple for not hiring him a few years back? Are they in such bad need of a total rebuild that he’d be all for wheeling and dealing back to No. 11 and 23?

Hard to say but after trading Keenan Allen to the Bears for a frozen deep dish pizza, the Chargers are looking pretty bleak. Justin Herbert’s rookie contract was wasted, so they desperately need to hit on rookie deals to even out his enormous salary. Every year should be a “winning window” with him but they are nowhere close to competing with Patrick Lavon Mahomes II any time soon unless they stockpile talent around Herbert.

There is a problem for the Vikings with No. 5 though: What if someone else gets to No. 4 and steals their QB of the future out from under Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s nose? Dealing with the Chargers would either have to be a move made right after the Patriots pick or with some incredibly reliable intel that suggested the Cards were going to stick and pick.

The biggest swing team in the top 10 could very well be the Giants. Do they actually want to take a quarterback or does everybody in the top five want the Vikings to believe they want a quarterback so Adofo-Mensah pulls out the blank check and slides it across the table?

Does anyone understand what the Giants are doing with their squad, anyway? If they were competing in a roster beauty contest, the G-Men wouldn’t be sent home as quickly as the Patriots, Cardinals and Chargers but at least Arizona and Los Angeles have quarterbacks and the Patriots have a pick where they can take a QB. The Giants have an albatross QB contract with Daniel Jones and very little to build from. Somehow they are in Year 10 of a rebuild with nothing to show for it.

They have every reason to take a quarterback since their present answer(s) there are below average to poor. Yet they also have every reason not to spend any additional draft capital to move up since they have needs at….*gestures at every position in the sport of football.*

Brian Daboll AKA thicker Matt Nagy could try the old trick of drafting a quarterback to save his job but that never really works. The Giants should actually be more of a candidate to trade down with the Vikings than trade up with anybody at the top. At the same time, they are the only other team that could match the Vikings’ draft capital — at least according to the value charts where their No. 6 and second-round picks add up to around the same or more (depending on which chart you ask) as the Vikings’ 11 and 23.

After the Giants, things get interesting. If there are still top quarterbacks on the board, would the Broncos and Raiders feel like they were within reach to trade up? But No. 7 is the Tennessee Titans, who might prefer to trade with an NFC team because the AFC is already full of first-round quarterbacks. Wouldn’t it be the irony of all ironies if the Atlanta Falcons, now home to a very rich Kirk Cousins, traded out of No. 8 to land the Vikings JJ McCarthy or whoever they want there?

The Bears wouldn’t help the Vikings at No. 9 and the Jets at 10 could be willing to slide back one spot if the Vikings wanted to guarantee a QB — though if they have reached No. 10, then that means the interest from the Broncos and Raiders wasn’t strong enough to get ahead of them.

By the way, what are the Broncos and Raiders thinking here? Jarrett Stidham and Gardner Minshew aren’t really going to start in the same division as the Super Bowl champs, right? If that’s the case, Sean Payton’s buyout is going to be more than Russell Wilson’s dead cap hit and Antonio Pierce will be smoking cigars as a linebackers coach for the Jaguars next year.

The Vikings landed the 23rd pick with the idea of making sure they could hold off those teams in any trade offer but they could push the price up and up to the point that Hershel Walker would blush.

The sheer volume of quality quarterback prospects and the trade angles to this year’s draft have made it one of the most captivating in years. Draft night could have fireworks or the Vikings could sit at No. 11 and watch their favorite QB drop into their laps. Or they could make the biggest move in team history to land their franchise quarterback and sacrifice whatever it takes to get there.

What we do know is that the teams ahead of the Vikings might remind you have a game of Clue. You can put together the evidence for all the reasons they might make a move with the Vikings or stay with their own pick but the closer we get the higher the odds seem that we won’t really know until the cards get turned over on draft night.

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