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Vikings Draft 2013: Keenan Allen Stock Dropping?

At one time Keenan Allen was thought to be the best WR in the 2013 draft. A series of unfortunate events might have dropped him out of the first round.

By Ted Glover
Keenan Allen could be sliding out of the first round
Keenan Allen could be sliding out of the first round
Jed Jacobsohn

WR Keenan Allen of Cal has been linked to the Vikings as a possible first round draft pick for quite awhile. WR is a position of need, Allen is big and has good hands, and some draft gurus have made comparisons to Anquan Boldin...who, if reports are to be believed, the Vikings were trying to trade for as the Percy Harvin trade was going down.

But Allen's stock has been dropping, and it's seemed to take a nosedive in recent days.

Initially, Allen hurt his knee in August, and it was a partially torn PCL. The injury didn't require surgery, but he missed the rest of the season. Once the off season began, Allen's knee still hadn't healed and he consequently missed the NFL Combine and Cal's Pro Day.

Even with that, his stock hadn't dropped too much, because it was assumed that once he had his own personal Pro Day, his first round stock would be solidified. His knee injury might drop him to lower into the first round, but not out.

That narrative might need some re-writing.

At his Pro Day, he turned in a very pedestrian 4.71 40 yard dash, and Dr. James Andrews (aka the guy that ushered in the Cyborg era in professional football) proclaimed Allen's knee to be 100%, but the muscles around the knee at 75%, which he was still rehabbing. The knee issue wasn't such a big deal, because people had made up their mind about Allen before the knee. Mike Mayock explains:

"If you like him, he's Anquan Boldin. If you don't like him, he's speed-deficient," Mayock said last week. "So I don't really care what he runs in the 40. On tape to me, he's a 4.55 guy all day long."

But then word leaked of Allen's combine drug test being red flagged for suspiciously high levels of water. High levels of water could indicate the person trying to flush drugs out of their system in advance of a test, but it's something Allen's agent has vociferously denied.

"We have received no notification about anything abnormal to his test. No team has requested a retest. Nobody," said J.T. Johnson, adding that he first got wind of this when a reporter called him Friday.

Stuff like this always seems to come out about multiple players in the days leading up to the draft, for multiple reasons. Some teams leak info to try and get a guy's stock to drop to make him available when they pick. Agents sometimes let information leak to make another guy at their client's position look bad...making their guy look better, and possibly improving their client's draft stock.

So now, with the new information about Allen out, people seem to be re-assessing where Allen might now be drafted:

One NFL scout said Cal WR Keenan Allen's stock will drop "significantly." The scout said that there were already "character concerns," as Allen didn't interview well at the combine, where teams thought he was "big-timing" them. The scout also added that he's "probably" in the late second-round range.

When you paint the whole picture of Allen--knee, flagged drug test, possible attitude issue--he seems like a guy that the Vikings have traditionally passed on in the first round.

With other positions that need to be addressed, like MLB, DT, and CB, there's a good chance that the Vikings could skip on WR completely in the first round.

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