2021 Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database, v6.0

Welcome, everyone, to the sixth installment of our Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database for the 2021 NFL Draft. We’re tracking what experts across the internet are projecting the purple to do in this year’s selection meeting, and will have an update every week from now until the actual draft hits a month from tomorrow.

We’re now up to 80 mocks in our Database, and we’re starting to see a shift for the Vikings based on both free agency and other teams making trades to move around the draft board as we saw with Miami, Philadelphia, and San Francisco the other day. We’ll detail the shift in more detail in our breakdown, but for now here are the 80 mocks that make up our Database for this week.

The defensive linemen still hold the top spot as far as position groups go this week, as they make up 33 of the 80 selections in this week’s update. Their lead has dropped significantly, however. . .in last week’s update, they had a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over the next-highest position group, but their lead this week is not nearly as large. Gregory Rousseau continues to lead the way with 13 selections, and Kwity Paye is just behind him with 11. Rousseau’s teammate, Jaelan Phillips, hangs on to six selections this week as well.

Christian Barmore has just about disappeared, as he appears just twice in this week’s update. We speculated last week that the Vikings’ signing Dalvin Tomlinson would eat into his numbers, and that appears to be what’s happening. He may disappear entirely before too much longer. Jayson Oweh continues to hold on to his one selection as well.

The drop-off from the defensive linemen has pretty much correlated with a rise among the offensive linemen. The OL picked up 28 of our 80 selections this week, and Alijah Vera-Tucker is now the second-most selected player in our Database, racking up 12 picks this week. Christian Darrisaw is mocked to the Vikings eight times in this week’s update. Samuel Cosmi and Rashawn Slater continue their decent showings with four and three selections, respectively. And yes, thanks to Mel Kiper, we get to add the name of Oregon offensive tackle Penei Sewell to our Database for this year, as he picked up one selection in this week’s update.

The linebackers also picked up a few selections and reached double figures with 10 picks this week. The lead for that position group is split between Azeez Ojulari and Micah Parsons, each of whom is mocked to the Vikings four times this week. Dylan Moses and a new face to our Database, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, each appear one time this week as well.

Defensive backs account for five of our selections this week. Newcomer Trevon Moehrig-Woodard joins Caleb Farley with two selections each this week, while Patrick Surtain II maintained his one selection from last week’s update.

The pass catchers are down to just two selections this week. We had a swap of Alabama receivers, as Jaylen Waddle dropped out of our Database for this week and DeVonta Smith reappeared. Kyle Pitts is still hanging on to one selection as well.

And this week there were not one, but two brave mock drafters out there that had the Vikings selecting a quarterback at #14. . .and it was not Trey Lance, but rather Mac Jones of Alabama. I mean, I don’t see it, but what do I know?

The following players are new to the Database this week:

• Oregon OT Penei Sewell
• Notre Dame LB Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah
• TCU S Trevon Moehrig-Woodard
• Alabama WR DeVonta Smith
• Alabama QB Mac Jones

The following players dropped out of our Database in this week’s update:

• Washington DT Levi Onwuzurike (for the second time)
• Oklahoma DE Ronnie Perkins
• Alabama WR Jaylen Waddle

With that, let’s get to the visuals, starting with the donut graph that breaks down this week’s update. You can see the blue area (representing the defensive line) is getting smaller, and Leon the red area (representing the offensive line) is getting larger. As always, you may click on the graph to embiggen it and more easily read the data.

And finally, our trends for this week, as you can see the different prospects rise and fall with each update to our Mock Draft Database. You can embiggen this picture by clicking on it as well.

That’s it for our Mock Draft Database update for this week, folks. Will the offensive linemen officially take over the top spot when we update again next weekend? Is anyone else going to mock a quarterback to the Vikings at #14? We’ll just have to wait and see.