2023 Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database, v3.0

It is once again time for this week’s installment of your Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database, tracking what all of the Really Smart Football People™ think that our favorite football team is going to do when the 2023 NFL Draft rolls around in a little more than six weeks.

We’re up to 50 mocks in our Database for this week, all of which have been added or updated since last week’s installment. Some of them account for the big trade between Chicago and Carolina that allowed the Panthers to move up to the #1 overall pick and some don’t. . .not that what’s going on that far up the draft board is going to affect the Vikings in any meaningful way. But, there have been some significant shifts from last week, so let’s get to it.

Here are the 50 mocks that make up our Database for this week. As always, any draft that is shown in italics involves a trade for the Vikings.

The following players are new additions to our Database for this week:

• Christian Gonzalez, CB, Oregon
• Jalin Hyatt, WR, Tennessee
• Quentin Johnson, WR, Texas Christian
• Adetomiwa Adebawore, DL, Northwestern
• Mazi Smith, DL, Michigan
• Trenton Simpson, LB, Clemson
• Jack Campbell, LB, Iowa

The following players dropped out of our Database this week:

• Emmanuel Forbes, CB, Mississippi State
• Jaxon Smith-Njigba, WR, Ohio State
• John Michael Schmitz, OL, Minnesota
• O’Cyrus Torrance, OL, Florida
• Antonio Johnson, S, Texas A&M
• Henry To’o To’o, LB, Alabama
• Anthony Richardson, QB, Florida

The following players have reappeared in our Database this week after having dropped out previously:

• Zay Flowers, WR, Boston College
• Myles Murphy, Edge, Clemson
• Nolan Smith, Edge, Georgia
• Keion White, Edge, Georgia Tech

The cornerbacks are still way ahead of the field, but their advantage is not nearly as large as it was last week when they had more selections than all the other positions combined. Of the 50 mocks we took a look at this week, 22 of them have the Vikings drafting a cornerback, with Maryland’s Deonte Banks once again leading the field. He picked up 11 selections this week, the only player in double figures this time around.

Strangely, the player that was just behind Banks last week, Mississippi State cornerback Emmanuel Forbes, completely dropped out of our Database this week. Cam Smith of South Carolina is now in second place amongst the corners with six selections. The other picks this week were divided between Kelee Ringo of Georgia (3 selections), Joey Porter Jr. of Penn State (1 selection), and newcomer Christian Gonzalez from Oregon (1 selection).

There’s a tie for the second-most selected position in this week’s Database, as edge defenders and interior defensive linemen each picked up eight selections. The highest individual total between these two positions went to a player that appeared in version 1.0 of our Database but dropped out last week in Clemson edge Myles Murphy. He has four votes this week in his reappearance. His Clemson teammate, Bryan Breese, garnered three picks this week and three other players picked up two selections: Pitt’s Calijah Kancey, Iowa’s Lukas van Ness, and Northwestern’s Adetomiwa Adebawore, who is a newcomer this week and whose name I’m totally copy-and-pasting because there’s no chance that I can spell it without doing that yet.

Three other players in the edge defender/defensive line mix each wound up with one selection this week. Georgia edge Nolan Smith and Georgia Tech edge Keion White both reappeared in our Database for this week, while Michigan defensive lineman Mazi Smith made his debut this week with one pick.

The wide receivers almost kept pace this week, but wound up with seven of our fifty selections. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who was one of our leaders in version 1.0 of our Database, is nowhere to be found this week. Instead, the lead among the receivers is shared by Southern Cal’s Jordan Addison and Texas Christian’s Quentin Johnson, both of whom were mocked to the Vikings twice this week. Three other pass catchers wound up with one selection each this week, as Boston College’s Zay Flowers found his way back into our Database, Tennessee’s Jalin Hyatt made his debut this week, and North Carolina’s Josh Downs stayed in our Database for another week.

The other five selections this week went to defensive players, as off-ball linebackers and safeties round out our Database for this week. Brian Branch of Alabama held it down for the safeties with two selections, while the linebacker vote was carried by two newcomers: Trenton Simpson of Clemson (2 selections) and Jack Campbell of Iowa (1 selection).

In just our third version of our Database for this year, we’ve already had 33 different players mocked to the Vikings at the #24 overall spot (which is actually the #23 spot for reasons we’ve gone over previously). That’s a lot of different players and we’ve still got six more of these to go before the ceremonial booing of Roger Goodell on 27 April.

Let’s get to our graphics for this week, starting with the donut graph that breaks down the picks for this week only. As always, you may click on this graphic to embiggen it.

And, for the first time this year, we have our trends graph, which we lovingly refer to as the “Jell-o salad” graph, showing all of the players that have appeared in our Database so far this year and how their stocks have risen and fallen through the pre-draft process.

One of these days I might see if I can’t find a way to move these graphics into the twenty-first century. It’s a bit low-tech, but it still gets the point across.

That’s our third Mock Draft Database for the Minnesota Vikings for this year, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll be back next weekend to see if anything has changed with free agency getting underway around the National Football League.