At this moment, the Minnesota Vikings have just four selections in the 2025 NFL draft, which will get underway in less than a month's time. It's the weakest collection of picks possessed by any of the league's 32 teams, largely due to the multiple moves the Vikings made last year that resulted in the selection of Dallas Turner at No. 17 overall.
General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and his staff are obviously well aware of their lack of picks. They also realize that league rules permit them to acquire more by trading down in the draft, if such an opportunity arises and that's the route they choose to take.
"Obviously, the capital is something people talk about, but every draft pick has a commensurate value that you can kind of break up into lots of picks," Adofo-Mensah told Vikings Entertainment Network's Tatum Everett in an interview at the NFL's annual league meeting in Palm Beach, FL this week. "If we wanted to pick 15 times, we could. There's a way to do that."
Adofo-Mensah has not been shy about moving up and down the board during his first three drafts as the Vikings' GM. In his infamous debut draft in 2022, he traded down 20 spots in the first round, then moved down against on Day 2 before eventually trading up a couple times. Last year, the Vikings traded up twice in the opening round, coming away with J.J. McCarthy and Turner.
Because they have so few picks in this draft, a trade down from No. 24 in the first round feels like a very strong possibility. It'll depend on how they stack their board, who's available when that pick comes up, and what kind of offers they get from teams looking to move up. They could also potentially move down from their other picks, which are Nos. 97 (third round), 139 (fifth round), and 187 (sixth round). In my opinion, it would be a bit surprising if they end up making fewer than six total selections by the time the draft wraps up.
As we've written before, one added benefit of the Vikings' impressive haul in free agency earlier this month is that they can go in any number of directions when the draft rolls around. They won't feel like there are any specific positions that have to be addressed with an early pick (or at all), which allows them to take the best player on the board across a wide range of positions.
"We're just going to be smart, selective, try and find the best players that impact our team," Adofo-Mensah said. "But also knowing, how do you best move around the board to get the best total collection of players? That's how we'll approach it. I think we'll be a 'best available' kind of approach and mindset. I'm excited about that. I challenged our group, we have grand ambition, and maybe it'll be the coolest story ever that you went into the draft with four picks and you did something great with it."
The 2025 NFL draft runs from April 24-26 in Green Bay.