Vikings first-round pick: Why mock drafts are all over the place

By this point in a lot of years, those who churn out endless NFL mock drafts seem to coalesce around a narrow view of what a particular team might do with a first round pick.

Fueled by a lot of information and a little groupthink, this convergence at least gives us a baseline idea of what to expect.

But for plenty of teams — the Vikings very much included and perhaps near the top — this has not happened in 2023. Mock drafts are all over the map less than a week before the first round commences.

In a general sense, this is because of the nature of this specific draft. As NFL writer and podcaster Nate Tice said on Friday's Daily Delivery podcast, "the consensus is that there's little consensus about this draft."

"It's the eye of the beholder draft," said Tice, the son of former Vikings coach Mike Tice, while adding that running back (Bijan Robinson of Texas) is about the only position upon which everyone agrees.

For the Vikings, that only adds another layer of mystery to what they will do at No. 23 overall.

The NFL Mock Draft Database keeps track of which players show up most frequently as targets for teams. The "consensus" for the Vikings is that they will take Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker with the 23rd pick, but that's their pick in just 13% of mock drafts — among the lowest percentages of any team in the first round.

But Hooker, too, is illustrative of part of the problem in trying to guess what the Vikings will do. Here is an outline of all the reasons it is challenging at best, impossible at worst, to predict what will happen on Thursday:

*The Vikings have a lot of needs — particularly for a team that just won 13 games — and currently own just five picks. They aren't slated to pick again after No. 23 until No. 87 in the third round.

Good guesses could have the Vikings targeting a wide receiver (after cutting Adam Thielen) or a corner (after moving on from several players). Both are positions of need where the value at No. 23 could be a good match. But there are several options at each position, so even identifying a particular player within a group is difficult.

*That brings us to the simple notion that what the Vikings do is heavily predicated on what 22 teams do before them. They surely have ideas of players to target and if-then contingencies based on how the board unfolds, but picking so low leaves them beholden to patience.

*Add in the aforementioned lack of consensus in the draft, and things get even more complicated. That leaves open the possibility for major surprises in the first round. Tice said there are only about eight to 10 players with a true first round grade, adding that picks 11-50 are fairly bunched together. How teams interpret that tier of players will have a huge impact on the Vikings.

*Then, of course, there's the possibility that the Vikings trade the pick — either to move up or move down. If a player the Vikings really like falls into, say, the teens they could be compelled to use future capital to move up. If they find a trade partner that wants to jump to 23 to get a specific player, they could move down to accumulate more picks — as they did last season.

*The wild card is the potential need for a quarterback. That expands the Vikings draft board in a way that hasn't been in play in recent years. But with Kirk Cousins playing on the final real year of his contract after offseason maneuvering by the Vikings, GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O'Connell could be looking to draft his eventual successor this year.

To that end, we see a perfect example of why this draft is so hard to predict. While Tennessee's Hooker has gained momentum in recent weeks by showing up in notable mock drafts to the Vikings, opinions about him vary widely. Even most of those who agree he could be a fit for the Vikings think he would be a bit of a reach at No. 23.

Tice said he grades Hooker as more of a third- or fourth-round pick, citing familiar concerns about his age (25), the unconventional offense he ran at Tennessee and the fact that he's coming off a major injury.

Our invested and heavily educated Star Tribune Vikings writers will weigh in next week, too, with how they see things unfolding.

But ultimately what matters is what the Vikings think. Once they are finally on the clock at No. 23 Thursday night, we will start to get some answers. Until then, trying to solve the question of consensus only leads to more questions.