With draft picks at No. 22 and 25, the Minnesota Vikings are entertaining trade offers two days ahead of Thursday’s first round.
“I’ve had calls already, opportunities of people trying to trade up, and I’ve also had teams that are in front of us that wanted to trade back,” general manager Rick Spielman said on Tuesday. “I think it all depends how the draft board unfolds on Thursday. For example, I would say if we stay at 22, and we have maybe seven or eight names still up there, to move back from 25 to gain another pick and still get the same quality of player. An example: Last year, we moved back three times in the third round and still had Mattison targeted and were able to still get him. A lot of that manipulation on the draft board depends on what’s up there, how you have the draft board stacked and how far are you willing to go back without risk of losing a particular player.”
The Vikings received the 22nd overall pick last month after sending Stefon Diggs and a 2020 seventh rounder to Buffalo in exchange for the Bills’ first, fifth and sixth-round picks in 2020 and a 2021 fourth-round selection.
Addressing trade speculation surrounding the star receiver at the NFL combine, Spielman said in February that, “there’s no reason … to anticipate that Stefon Diggs is not going to be a Minnesota Viking.”
Speaking publicly for the first time since the trade was executed two days prior to the start of free agency, Spielman noted that the haul of draft picks Minnesota received in exchange for the fifth-year receiver was too much to pass up.
“We had no intention of trading Diggs at the combine,” Spielman said. “He was a great player for us. He was great in the community. But then there was an opportunity, a business opportunity, that came up as this evolved that we felt was both good for Stefon and was for us, and we decided to go ahead and make the trade, but we’ll always appreciate everything that Stefon has done for us here in Minnesota and wish him nothing but the best.”
The depth of this year’s wide receiver class puts the Vikings in position to draft one or more players to replace the role Diggs filled since 2015.
Minnesota is also in the market for a cornerback, which could come via a first-round selection on Thursday. Upon the departure of Xavier Rhodes, Trae Waynes and Mackensie Alexander in free agency, the Vikings will feature an entire new set of starting cornerbacks in 2020.
What Spielman said Tuesday regarding “big changes” coming to the secondary may foreshadow that the Vikings aren’t looking to trade recently franchised safety Anthony Harris.
“One of the things — not only is Anthony Harris a great football player for us, and great in the community — but by us being able to franchise Anthony, we do have the safeties pretty well set, knowing that we’re going to have a lot of young corners we’re going to have to line up and play with,” Spielman said.
Harris has yet to sign his $11.41 million franchise tender, but is in the process of working out a long-term deal, sources with knowledge of the situation told ESPN.