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A dozen Vikings appear in CBS Sports’ “Ultimate NFL Draft”

What a process this must have been

By Christopher Gates
Minnesota Vikings v Arizona Cardinals Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

With the offseason continuing to drag on, CBS Sports has put together a project that can give us a little something to talk about.

Josh Edwards went through the history of the NFL Draft and determined who, in his opinion, was the best player ever to be selected at each draft slot. Yes, all the way from #1 overall to Mr. Irrelevant at #256.

When you figure that the average for each team would be eight players if things were distributed equally, the Minnesota Vikings are above average in Edwards’ estimation. He has twelve different Vikings being the best players selected at their slot in the history of the NFL Draft.

A couple of them are names that you’d expect, such as Adrian Peterson being the best player ever to be selected at #7 and Randy Moss being the best player selected at #21 overall. But, as you move down the list, you get some more obscure names and some that you might not expect to be there.

Here are the complete list of Vikings to be tabbed in Edwards’ Ultimate NFL Draft.

  • #7 overall - Adrian Peterson (2007)
  • #21 overall - Randy Moss (1998)
  • #88 overall - Danielle Hunter (2015)
  • #100 overall - Everson Griffen (2010)
  • #127 overall - Ray Edwards (2006)
  • #172 overall - Brandon Fusco (2011)
  • #173 overall - Matt Birk (1998)
  • #179 overall - Steve Jordan (1982)
  • #220 overall - Shamar Stephen (2014)
  • #227 overall - Brad Johnson (1992)
  • #241 overall - Terry Allen (1990)
  • #243 overall - Jason Fisk (1995)

I was surprised to see former Chiefs’ linebacker Derrick Johnson listed at #15 instead of Alan Page and was going to go off on a big spiel about it. . .until I saw that Edwards was doing this starting from the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Page was drafted in 1967, so he doesn’t qualify.

As you’d expect, some of the picking get a little slim once you get to later on in the draft. Still, it’s a pretty cool project that Edwards put together, and it’s nice to see so many members of the Vikings make the list.

Are there any Vikings that you can think of that Edwards may have missed?

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