2020 NFL Draft: The Minnesota Vikings and Pick #22

With the 2020 NFL Draft less than a week away, I wanted to carry over a bit of our history series for regular season games and take a look at who the Minnesota Vikings have selected throughout their history with the same picks they currently hold in the 2020 NFL Draft. We’ll start with the first selection they have at #22 overall, the pick they acquired from the Buffalo Bills in the trade for Stefon Diggs.

This is also going to be one of the easier ones to do, as the Vikings have only selected at pick #22 once in team history. The guy they got at that pick, however, turned out to be a pretty good one.

Pick #22 is where the Vikings acquired the services of Florida wide receiver Percy Harvin in the 2009 NFL Draft. Harvin was the fourth wide receiver off the board that year, behind Darrius Heyward-Bey (#7), Michael Crabtree (#10), and Jeremy Maclin (#18).

Harvin made an impact for the Vikings immediately, as he was the recipient of Brett Favre’s first touchdown pass as a Viking, a 6-yard score in Minnesota’s season-opening rout of the Cleveland Browns. He also had a big 101-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in the “Metrodome Miracle” win over the San Francisco 49ers, making him the first player in Vikings history to score touchdowns in each of his first three career games.

Harvin would go on to win the Rookie of the Year Award for his performance in 2009, a season that saw him catch 60 passes for 790 yards and six scores and add in two kick return touchdowns.

Harvin would play four seasons with the Vikings, with his final season cut short by an ankle injury. He was then traded to the Seattle Seahawks during the 2013 offseason for a 2013 first-round pick, a 2013 seventh-round pick, and a 2014 third-round pick. He finished his career with the Vikings with the most kick return touchdowns in team history with five, a mark that was later tied by both Cordarrelle Patterson and Marcus Sherels. He accounted for 29 touchdowns in his four seasons in purple.

Can the Vikings get a player of Harvin’s caliber at #22 in the 2020 NFL Draft? It certainly would be nice if they could.