What Would It Take For The Vikings To Trade Up?

In the intro to today's Open Thread, we linked to a story from NFL.com that says that the Minnesota Vikings were looking to trade up in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft, and that they were targeting a receiver. . .believed to be either West Virginia's Tavon Austin or Tennessee's Cordarrelle Patterson. The story also speculates that the team wants to trade up from #23 while keeping their pick at #25.

Using this "updated" chart from DraftTek.com, which is based on the famous Jimmy Johnson chart, the Vikings' current picks have the following "point values."

1 (23) - 760
1 (25) - 720
2 (52) - 380
3 (83) - 175
4 (102) - 92
4 (120) - 54
5 (155) - 29.4
6 (189) - 15.8
7 (213) - 6.2
7 (214) - 5.8
7 (229) - 1.2

For starters, I don't think they'd need to trade up to get their hands on Cordarrelle Patterson, if that's their target. Tavon Austin, on the other hand, is a different matter. He's expected to be the first receiver off the board due to his explosiveness, which has been compared to that of former Viking Percy Harvin.

In my opinion, the absolute floor for Austin is the St. Louis Rams at #16. If Austin is on the board at 16, I highly doubt he's going to be on the board at 17. That means that, at a minimum, in order to position themselves to get Austin, they would have to move from 23 up to at least the New Orleans Saints' pick at #15. According to the chart linked above, the 15th pick is worth 1050 points.

In order to get up to that spot, the most equal deal would be the Vikings sending their first and second round picks to New Orleans in exchange for #15 and the Saints' fourth round pick (#109 overall). Of course, being that it's helping the Bounty Hunters, I would hope that the team would be quite hesitant to make that trade.

The other team that has been most prominently tied to a receiver is the Miami Dolphins at #12. That means that, if the Vikings truly coveted Austin (or Patterson, I guess, if they didn't think he was going to drop), they would have to jump to the San Diego Chargers' pick at #11, a selection that's worth 1250 points via the chart. To move up that high, the Vikings would likely have to give up their first round pick at #23, their second round pick, and their fourth-round pick that they got from Detroit at #102. And even that would still leave them a few "points" short.

The team could look into giving up picks in the 2014 draft, but that doesn't sound like the sort of thing Rick Spielman would be terribly big on, in my opinion. I still think that he's more likely to trade down, despite the Vikings' abundance of draft picks, and try to get more selections. . .possibly even some in the 2014 draft.

We saw with the trade-up for Harrison Smith last season that Spielman isn't afraid to trade up if he sees a guy that he likes. However, with where the Vikings currently are and where it appears they'd have to get to in order to get a wide receiver (if that's what they're targeting), it could end up being a pretty tall order.