It’s said that you can’t evaluate a draft class until three years later, because you need at least that long to see which players have established careers and which ones are no longer in the league, rather than who won the popularity contest before the draft. Despite that, many talking heads on TV have been eagerly assigning grades to the just-concluded NFL draft, and the fans of each team eagerly follow the narrative. Even Arif Hasan has fallen victim to this temptation, although he’s at least trying to follow a methodology to determine the overall strength or weakness of each team’s 2014 draft class.

One of the interesting things about gathering Big Boards across the country and finding the different ways that evaluators grade the players is that it gives us an ability to take a look at the draft from their perspective. There’s a big stigma against “grading the draft,” that I don’t think makes a lot of sense because we’re so willing to share our opinions on the players and teams who drafted them in every other way.

It seems we can give opinions about individual players and their teams without criticism. but as soon as we summarize it in a letter grade, we’re doing something wrong and have to wait. Instead, it may be better to wait three years to judge it.

But that’s no fun, and we want feedback. We just have to acknowledge we have a high band of uncertainty and give our impressions of the draft.

But how about instead of inserting post-hoc opinions about our favorite team, we take a look at a metric we’ve already laid the groundwork for? Let’s compare a team’s draft capital to what the Big Boards accumulated said.

It’s not perfect, especially in a deep draft, but by assigning players in their rankings an amount of points equal to the trade charts’ equivalent pick value, we can find out what players are considered to be worth. Using the NFL Trade Value Chart (put together by Jimmy Johnson way back when), we can compare the amount of draft capital a team entered the draft with to the “value” of players selected. This is perhaps the most appropriate way to gauge the number of “steals” and “reaches” a team makes and quantifying.

Spoiler:

Having traded away their original second round pick to Seattle to move back up to the bottom of the first round to get Teddy Bridgewater, the Vikings started the evening with only two third round picks. There was some speculation about Rick Spielman trading back up into the second round, but nobody had solid ideas about which player the team might have wanted urgently enough to give up any more later round picks. Spielman later said that they’d tried to “make some movement” but that they couldn’t come up with “a deal we felt comfortable with”.

The Vikings selected Oregon State defensive end Scott Crichton with the first of their third round picks. The Daily Norseman‘s Eric Thompson says this was a good selection:

With many fans expecting the team to go after a corner with the 72nd overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, the Vikings got another talented pass rusher in Oregon State defensive end Scott Crichton. It was definitely a “value” pick — Crichton had a second round grade on most draft boards and was widely considered one of the best five or six edge rushers available in the draft. Mere moments after being chosen by the Vikings, Crichton jumped on a conference call to talk with Twin Cities beat writers.

[…]

Crichton played a little linebacker his freshman year at Oregon State, but make no mistake about it–he’ll be on the field to get after the quarterback. The Beavers ran a 4-3 defense and Crichton’s bread and butter was his pass rush. “That’s my thing. I love to get after the quarterback.” He played on both sides of the line with the Beavers along with some plays. Like most draft pundits Crichton expected to be drafted in the third round but nonchalantly claimed that the “third round’s fine”. “I’m just grateful for this opportunity. I’m ready to show what I can do and prove people wrong for not picking me earlier.”

At the press conference after the selection, Rick Spielman said “He’s not very nice on the field, which you like to see.”

With their last pick of the evening, the Vikings selected running back Jerick McKinnon from Georgia Southern. Arif Hasan said that McKinnon had been a stand-out performer at the combine, but that he’ll be a bit of a project (despite “insane measureables”). He’s certainly not a carbon copy of Toby Gerhart, being 5’9″ tall, weighing 209 lbs, and boasting a 4.4 time at the combine. His college football career was an odd one: started out as a cornerback, then eventually becoming a quarterback and running back (Ben Goessling refers to his role as having been “triple-option”, which is a new one on me). His role isn’t as clear-cut as you’d think, despite being drafted as a running back, during the NFL Network draft coverage, Mike Mayock said he could even start at safety in the NFL. On the official Vikings overview, his weaknesses make you think the team has other plans for him: “On the short side. Runs a bit upright and hesitant. Average burst to the perimeter. Not a creative, make-you-miss runner. Very limited career receiving production (10 career catches). Not stout in pass protection.” Those last two items are not what you’d expect if the team was planning to use McKinnon to spell Adrian Peterson on third down. Ideally, your third round running back would be an experienced receiver with good blocking skills.

With both Chrichton and McKinnon, the Vikings clearly valued their athletic potential or “upside” over more polished players with lower theoretical potential. That’s a strong indication of confidence that they can teach technique on both sides of the ball. And given the strength of the new coaching staff, that’s a sensible approach. Neither of these players is likely to start as rookies, but they both have versatility in the roles they could fill and given a year of seasoning, they could become useful parts of the puzzle down the road.

#Vikings have taken a RB turned LB, and a QB/CB turned RB. Common trait is athletic ability. Can't say they're not going for upside.

— Ben Goessling (@GoesslingESPN) May 10, 2014

The Vikings have four picks remaining in today’s final four rounds of the draft: 145th (5th), 148th (5th), 184th (6th) and 223rd (7th) … before we account for Trader Rick’s taste for wheeling and dealing, anyway.

Update: Arif Hasan profiles Scott Chrichton and Jerick McKinnon. Arif’s always good at analysis.

Last year, in my annual pre-draft post, I admitted once again that I have no real idea who Minnesota will select, as I don’t follow college football. I’ve been reading the fan sites’ schizophrenic swerving back and forth among the various quarterbacks (this week, Bridgewater is hot garbage, but Bortles is the bomb: last week, Manziel was the man and Bortles was nowhere, etc.), as quarterback is the most obvious long-term need for the team (likely with their first round pick, although trading back to stockpile additional picks is another alternative).

While I don’t have much of a clue about who will be drafted, I do know that the team has certain positional needs that have not yet been addressed in free agency. The Vikings made some good acquisitions during the free agency feeding frenzy, with Linval Joseph at nose tackle and Captain Munnerlyn at cornerback filling two of the biggest deficiencies in 2013. Here are the top positions that should be addressed during the draft (in my opinion, anyway):

• Quarterback. The Vikings have the 8th pick in the first round and given the depth of the talent this year thanks to a record number of college juniors who have declared themselves eligible for the draft, the talent pool is both broad and deep. There are three quarterbacks who have received the most attention in the run-up to the draft and one or more of them may be on the board when the Vikings are on the clock. They’ve got Matt Cassel under contract for 2014 and 2015 and Christian Ponder still has a year left on his rookie deal: the team chose not to exercise their fifth-year option on Ponder’s contract. I had assumed the team was hoping to trade Ponder for a draft pick this year, which might mean spending two draft picks on quarterbacks, one early and one late. However, in a press conference on Tuesday, Rick Spielman specifically ruled out trading Ponder either before or during the draft (and we’re free to believe him or not). Several bloggers are predicting the team will use the #8 pick on a defensive player and attempt to trade back into the bottom of the first round to take a quarterback (so they get the fifth-year option on his rookie contract).
• Middle Linebacker. I was surprised to see the Vikings re-sign Jasper Brinkley after he spent a year with Arizona. He’s good against the run, but not very good at all defending the pass. Others on the roster include fan favourite Audie Cole (he of the back-to-back pick-sixes in preseason play as a rookie), and Michael Mauti (who had three ACL tears in his college career). However, the middle linebacker may not be as important to the new defensive scheme as it was in the Tampa-2 variant the Vikings ran last year — or the responsibilities are changed enough that defending receivers isn’t a priority.
• Safety. Harrison Smith suffered a turf toe injury last year which kept him off the field for half the season, and the team struggled with filling the gap. Andrew Sendejo improved over the season, but drafting a safety to strengthen the passing defence would be a good move.
• Cornerback. Xavier Rhodes made great strides in his rookie season and should be a fixture on the Vikings defence for several years if he continues to develop. New free agent signing Captain Munnerlyn may fill the role Antoine Winfield did so well: outside corner in base, then switching to slot corner in nickel coverage. Josh Robinson had a truly awful year in 2013, but he was playing in the slot and had reportedly never played that position in college. Drafting an outside corner makes a lot of sense for the Vikings, and it’s another position with good depth this year.
• Running Back. Adrian Peterson is still the best running back in the game, but he’s getting to the point in his career where the vast majority of running backs start to decline. The Vikings had the luxury of a high-quality backup in Toby Gerhart, but he departed in free agency to get a chance to be a starter. With the new coaching staff, the Vikings are likely to de-emphasize the running game, so it’s unlikely the team would spend a high draft pick at this position, but a mid-round selection would make a great deal of sense.
• Offensive Guard. The offensive line is one of the strengths of the team, but an upgrade might be in order at the left guard position. Charlie Johnson got a two-year contract to come back, but finding a rookie to be his understudy or even to replace him as a starter would make the line even better than it already is.
• Tight End. The expensive John Carlson experiment came to a close after injuries kept Carlson off the field far too much and the team didn’t get much production for their big money investment as a result. Kyle Rudolph is very good and still improving, and Rhett Ellison does a good job of imitating Jim Kleinsasser as the big blocking tight end/H-back. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Vikings invest a mid-to-late-round pick on a pass-catching tight end to pair with Rudolph.

Not on my list of priorities but a position that’s suddenly being discussed over the last few days is defensive tackle (specifically Pitt’s Aaron Donald). This might just be a side-effect of the extra two weeks of speculation caused by pushing the draft back into May, or it might indicate that the Vikings have their doubts about last year’s first rounder Sharif Floyd. Floyd played behind Kevin Williams and didn’t seem to have as much impact as you might hope for a first-round selection. While I don’t see the team spending another high pick on that position with so many other areas to address, I guess it should be considered as a possibility. I’d think trading back for more picks would be a much more likely outcome, however.

At 1500ESPN, Andrew Krammer lists the Vikings’ needs on offense and defence.

This all assumes that the Vikings stick with their current allocation of draft picks (eight, including an extra they got in the Percy Harvin trade from Seattle). There’s a strong sense that the Vikings might trade down to amass more picks in later rounds — Rick Spielman didn’t get the nickname “Trader Rick” for nothing. If they do want to move down in the first round, John Holler covered some of the possibilities (including positions I don’t think are worth a first round pick for the Vikings).

Short answer … no. But CCNorseman at the Daily Norseman has come up with an evaluation system that looks promising, especially as the Vikings are once again hoping to draft their QBOTF in this year’s crapshoot draft:

First, I created a list of quarterbacks to research to determine what traits they might have had in common coming out of college, both good and bad. I attempted to answer the following question: Were there certain traits that all successful quarterbacks possessed coming out of the draft, and were there any negative traits that can generally be dismissed as not being that important? As it turns out, the answer is yes to both questions.

In compiling a list of quarterbacks to study, I decided to take a look at all of the most successful quarterbacks that have entered the league within the last 15 years, regardless of the round in which they were drafted (or if they were drafted at all). I think most fans can agree that we need a quarterback that can lead the Vikings to the playoffs, and ultimately to the Super Bowl. And most quarterbacks that can achieve consistent playoff appearances or consistent efficiency metrics tend to have the best chance of winning a Super Bowl. So in order to be qualified as “successful” for this study, a quarterback must have either won a Super Bowl, have appeared in at least 10 playoff games, or be ranked in the top 32 of career “adjusted net yards per attempt” (ANY/A) statistic compared to the entire history of the NFL (ANY/A is the statistic that most closely correlates to winning and losing for quarterbacks).

[…]

In any case, from there I scoured the internet for pre-draft scouting reports of all 26 quarterbacks, and unfortunately I drew blanks on 6 of them that were drafted prior to the year 2000 (Kurt Warner, Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb, Daunte Culpepper, David Garrard and Matt Hasselbeck). So for the remaining 20 quarterbacks that I could actually find pre-draft scouting reports online, I tracked which attributes were listed as “positive traits” and which attributes were listed as “negative traits” in the various reports. After boiling down the data I began to see which traits occurred most frequently and there were seven attributes that stood out as being the most common as they applied to more than half of the 20 quarterbacks on the list. So, here is a list of the seven most common “positive traits” that successful NFL quarterbacks on the list above possessed coming out of college:

1. Good Pocket Awareness and mobile around the pocket with an ability to “step up” in the pocket (15 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
2. Smart and made good decisions with the football showing patience (14 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
3. Good Arm Strength or “Prototypical NFL Arm Strength” (13 of 19 QBs possessed this trait)
4. Good Attitude, leader and fierce competitor (13 of 19 QBs possessed this trait)
5. Has good vision, can see the field and read defenses (11 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
6. Good accuracy (11 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
7. Can throw on the run (11 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)

Some other positive traits that appeared for several of the Quarterbacks on the list (but less than half) were: good size/stature, good ability to scramble and avoid the rush, quick release, good touch passes and good ball placement and timing. But again, those traits were not common for the majority of the quarterbacks on the list with each one being common for only 8 or 9 quarterbacks, total. So in short if we can find a quarterback in the draft that exhibits most (if not all) of the seven traits above, then they will have a lot in common with the 20 most successful quarterbacks drafted over the past 15 years when they were college prospects. And therefore, they should have much better odds of panning out as a draft selection just as these prospects did before them.

He then uses these identified traits to look at current draft prospects and the results are rather different than most mock drafts portray:

In any case where does all of this leave us in regards to the quarterback prospects in the 2014 draft? Which ones are most likely to succeed? Well, in looking at the top 10 QBs from the latest cumulative draft rankings, they all possessed some of the traits above, but none of them possessed all seven (and of the 20 most successful, none of them possessed all 7 coming out of college either). In order to determine with traits were more important, I assigned a point system to each one relative to their frequency in the scouting reports. Below is the point scale.

QB Traits Point Scale
Trait #1, Good Pocket Awareness: 7 points
Trait #2, Good decision making: 6 Points
Trait #3, Good arm strength: 5 Points
Trait #4, Leader and good attitude: 5 Points
Trait #5, Can read defenses: 4 Points
Trait #6, Good accuracy: 4 Points
Trait #7, Can throw on the run: 4 Points
Total: 35 Points Possible

If a quarterback had one of the traits listed above as a positive, they earned that many points. However, if it was listed as a negative part of their game, then I subtracted that many points from their total. If one of these traits simply wasn’t listed as a positive or a negative, then it didn’t count for or against them. Listed below are the seven quarterbacks that scored double digit points based on this rating metric.

It won’t surprise anyone that Christian Ponder’s score using this scale comes out as a magnificent -2 (yes, that’s a negative number). If this scoring system was in use at Winter Park in the coming draft, the Vikings would end up drafting Derek Carr, Fresno State (score 28 out of 35) or Jimmy Garoppolo, Eastern Illinois (who scores 27 out of 35).

The Minnesota Vikings have been active in the free agency market — uncharacteristically so, according to some fans — and have addressed some of the most glaring needs through re-signing key free agents of their own and picking up other teams’ free agents as well. Before free agency started, the team ranked almost last in every meaningful defensive metric (points given up, yards given up, etc.), and defensive collapses at the end of several games almost literally made the difference between going to the playoffs in 2012 and finishing in the cellar in 2013. A rational drafting policy would have been to use the draft to plug many of the leaks, but instead the team has used free agency to patch most of them so that — with one big exception — they’re free to take the best available player in the draft.

Unfortunately, the big exception is the quarterback position. Matt Cassel has come back, giving the Vikings stability at QB, but he’s not the long-term answer. He can start (and win), but he’s only under contract for 2014 and 2015. He can, however, act as a mentor for a younger player if the Vikings can find the right draft prospect to groom. That’s more black art than science, as the number of accomplished college quarterbacks who sink without a trace in the NFL clearly demonstrates. Cassel gives the Vikings the luxury of not having to start a rookie, but they need to be lucky on their selection (in the way they weren’t with Christian Ponder).

At the Daily Norseman, K.J. Segall looks at how the Vikings free agent signings will impact their draft strategy:

So what does all of this mean for the upcoming draft? While Spielman’s reputation in free agency was that of a ‘wait and see’ approach, conversely he’s been seen — particularly in the past two drafts — as an extremely aggressive wheeler-and-dealer, netting five first round picks (Kalil, Smith, Floyd, Rhodes, and Patterson) in just two years. But just because that’s been his reputation doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s exactly how he will always approach the draft. To his great credit the aggressive moves for five first round picks have also netted five very solid starters (or, in Floyd’s case, future starters), with nary a bust amongst them. This indicates that he is aggressive only when he and his scout team have identified a target that the team needs, and further indicates that their ability to pick these targets is quite good. Which, of course, further means that he won’t be aggressive unless such a target is available.

In a draft such as the upcoming one, seen as deep at several important positions and with the Vikings having the number 8 overall pick, there is a strong possibility that Spielman will want to swap down and garner more selections. He’s said as much — of course, if you believe Spielman right now, well, then I have a bridge for sale that I’d LOVE to discuss with you.

[…]

While any attempts to read into Spielman’s intended draft strategy beforehand are inevitably going to be half-correct at best (nobody saw a trade down with the Browns in 2012 coming), perhaps we can begin to clarify some likely paths he’s going to take via his actions in free agency.

As it stands right now, you can cross basically any D-line position off our list of needs. That’s not to say we couldn’t use — and won’t pursue — a little more depth, but it’s not very high up there anymore. Furthermore you can bump CB down a bit — it’s still a need, mind you, but not as big as it was before when we basically needed two more starting caliber players as well as depth. The aforementioned QB situation is still glaring, as is LB and OG. (I would list needs starting with those three, in that order.) I don’t see safety being a concern, as Sanford is likely safe for another year — not to mention decent depth like Sendejo in that department. (Sanford… the safety… is safe. See what I did there? Please tell me you saw what I did there.)

He discusses at some length the potential trade-up from the number 8 pick, including the option of trading future draft picks, but if there’s any team in the NFL less likely to go big on a trade like that it’s the team that got the short end of the stick in the infamous Herschel Walker trade (read ’em and weep, or laugh like a manaic if you’re a Cowboys fan).