2021 Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database, v9.0 (FINAL)

It’s Draft Day, everyone! We made it! We really, really made it.

As promised, I have cobbled together one last version of this year’s Mock Draft Database to see who the experts everywhere have the Minnesota Vikings selecting in tonight’s first round. It’s still about nine hours until draft time, so a few of these mocks might update between now and the time the ceremonial booing of Roger Goodell gets underway, but for the most part this should be a pretty solid gauge of where the experts see the Vikings going.

With that, here are the 100 mocks that make up the final version of the 2021 Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database. Nearly all of these have been updated within the past couple of days, so this is going to be about as hot and fresh as it gets. Mocks that involve the Vikings making a trade are shown in italics, while mocks that have them making a trade up are shown in bold italics. The latter shouldn’t be hard to find. . .there’s only one and it’s right up at the top.

After a bit of back-and-forth over the past couple of weeks, the offensive linemen firmly established themselves at the top of the heap in our final Database of the season. Of the 100 mocks that we compiled, 60 of them have the Vikings selecting an offensive lineman in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft. The runaway winner is USC guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, whose name appears 32 times in our last update. Assuming the Vikings wanted him to play guard, this would be just the second time in team history that the Vikings have taken a guard in Round 1. The other one was some guy named Randall McDaniel, who I understand turned out to be pretty solid.

Virginia Tech tackle Christian Darrisaw came in second, being picked 19 times in our final update. Northwestern tackle Rashawn Slater saw his name appear five times, while Oklahoma State tackle Teven Jenkins was selected four times in this last update.

The defensive linemen saw a bit of a slip in this last update, with 34 selections going to that position. The top spot among the defensive lineman actually wound up being split between two different players, as Michigan’s Kwity Paye and Miami’s Jaelan Phillips each garnered 16 selections from the experts. The only two selections that didn’t go to either of those two players went to Phillips’ teammate, Gregory Rousseau. If you’ll recall, Rousseau was on top of the heap in our first Mock Draft Database of the year, which gives you a pretty good idea of how rapidly things can change.

That only leaves six selections for all of the other position groups, and half of those went to linebackers. Penn State star Micah Parsons found himself being tabbed by the Vikings twice in this final update, while Georgia linebacker Azeez Ojulari managed to nab one selection.

The experts did allow Mike Zimmer to scratch his cornerback itch a couple of times in this final update, with two of the experts selecting South Carolina cornerback Jaycee Horn. The only other selection went to a wide receiver, as Alabama star Jaylen Waddle once again makes his way into the Database with one selection.

That’s everyone for this final update, folks. Overall, throughout the course of this pre-draft process, there have been 28 different players mocked to the Vikings in various forms:

• 7 defensive linemen (Gregory Rousseau, Kwity Paye, Christian Barmore, Jayson Oweh, Jaelan Phillips, Levi Onwuzurike, Ronnie Perkins)
• 6 offensive lineman (Christian Darrisaw, Rashawn Slater, Alijah Vera-Tucker, Samuel Cosmi, Penei Sewell, Teven Jenkins)
• 5 defensive backs (Jaycee Horn, Patrick Surtain II, Caleb Farley, Trevon Moehrig, Greg Newsome II)
• 4 pass catchers (Jaylen Waddle, DeVonta Smith, Rashod Bateman, Kyle Pitts)
• 4 linebackers (Micah Parsons, Dylan Moses, Azeez Ojulari, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah)
• 2 quarterbacks (Trey Lance, Mac Jones)

Of those 28 players, however, only 11 of them appear in our final update. Four of those 11 players (Vera-Tucker, Darrisaw, Paye, and Phillips) account for 83% of the selections this time around.

Here are the final graphic representations of how everything looks for this year, starting with the donut graph that breaks down our final group of selections for this year. As always, click to embiggen the picture if it allows you to see it more easily.

Last, but not least, our final trend graph of the year, which allows you to see the rise and fall of all 28 players that appeared in our Database throughout the course of the pre-draft process. You can click to embiggen this one as well.

I want to thank a couple of sites that I’ve been making use of in order to compile the Database each week. Those are the NFL Mock Draft Database and the Walter Football Mock Draft Database. It’s much easier to do this with those folks putting all of the various mocks in easy-to-find places.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this year’s edition of the Mock Draft Database and that it has proven insightful for you as we get closer to the 2021 NFL Draft. This is the seventh year that I’ve done the Mock Draft Database since it started in 2013. . .remember there wasn’t one in 2017 because the Vikings didn’t have a first-rounder that year. . .and it’s helped me to sort of get an idea of where the purple are looking.

With that, we’re about six hours or so away from the start of the festivities, so make sure that you’re here for everything draft-related for the rest of this afternoon and into this evening!