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).