We’re in the final stretch of the 2022 NFL draft, where the overthinking and overanalyzing becomes the common theme. This is the time when teams start getting cold feet on draft picks and second-thinking the plan they’ve spent the last several weeks putting together.
The Minnesota Vikings could easily become one of those teams considering the flexibility they have with the No. 12 overall pick.
But NBC Sports’ Peter King has the team sticking to its guns and taking the one player that has been tied to them since the very beginning.
In his recently released mock draft, King wrote:
There are good fits, and there is Stingley in Minnesota, where he’d be coached by his old defensive coordinator at LSU, secondary coach Daronte Jones, and he’d be mentored by former Tiger corner Patrick Peterson.
Stingley would essentially be right at home with the Vikings. Granted, he’d have to trade the warm and sunshine in New Orleans with a little cold and snow, but it would be well worth it for him to reunite with Jones and play with Peterson.
The Vikings might have the luxury to go in a lot of different directions with their first-round pick, but it would behoove them to address a secondary that gave up the fifth-most passing yards in the league last season.
And Stingley is a player that can help them do it.
"You cut the film on, he is a STAR" ⭐️@DeAngeloHall23 loves what he sees in @LSUfootball CB Derek Stingley Jr. 👀 pic.twitter.com/XBdWDLgKmL
— NFL Total Access (@NFLTotalAccess) April 25, 2022
If he could have entered the draft after his freshman year in college, he would have been a top-10 pick. He was that good at one point. But injuries in his sophomore and junior seasons slowed his progression.
“I think he was the best NFL prospect in the country as a freshman, and his workout this spring showed a lot of [Darrelle] Revis to me,” a general manager told King.
There’s definitely some risk involved with taking Stingley early given the injury history and lack of sustained progress.
But if there’s even an iota of a chance he could mimic some of the things that made Revis one of the greatest shutdown corners in NFL history, the Vikings should strongly consider making this selection, assuming he’s still on the board.
