2022 Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database, v4.0

The cornerbacks continue to dominate

It’s time, once again, for the latest installment of your Minnesota Vikings Mock Draft Database, where we take a look at what the draftniks from around the internet are projecting our favorite football team to do when the 2022 NFL Draft comes around in less than four weeks.

We are now up to 70 mocks in our Database, and once again the vast majority of them have been updated or newly-added since the last time we did one of these updates. We get most of these mocks from the NFL Mock Draft Database website and take out the selections for the Vikings because. . .well, those are the ones we care about. Again, if you see a draft that’s shown in italics, that’s one where the mock drafter has projected the Vikings to make a trade.

With that, here are the 70 mocks that make up the Database for this week.

Not surprisingly, the defensive backs are continuing their dominance in our fourth Database of the offseason. Of the 70 mock drafts we’ve sampled for this week’s Database, there are 50 of them that have the Vikings using the 12th overall pick to address the defensive backfield.

Derek Stingley Jr. of LSU is once again crushing the field this week, as he’s garnered 27 of a possible 70 selections this week. That’s more than double the next-highest number of selections this week. We do, however, have a new name in second place, as Washington cornerback Trent McDuffie has jumped into the #2 spot with 12 selections. Ahmad Gardner of Cincinnati, whose likelihood of being available at #12 seems to be decreasing significantly, has fallen all the way to six selections this week.

Rounding out our defensive back selections are Andrew Booth Jr. of Clemson, who is back this week after a couple of weeks’ absence. His name appears three times this week, while Kaiir Elam of Florida is mocked to the Vikings twice in this week’s Database.

Edge defenders continue to be the second-most mocked position for the Vikings, but it’s becoming a more and more distant second each week. This week sees edge rushers being mocked to the Vikings 10 times, with six of those going to Florida State star Jermaine Johnson II. Purdue defensive end George Karlaftis picks up three selections this week, while Georgia’s Travon Walker also makes a re-appearance in this week’s Database, jumping back in with one selection.

The offensive linemen are up to third place this week as far as positions go with four total selections. Those picks are evenly split between Iowa center Tyler Linderbaum and Northern Iowa offensive tackle Trevor Penning.

Jordan Davis of Georgia continues to hold it down for interior defensive linemen, but his support seems to be dropping as well. He only appears three times in this week’s Database.

Alabama wide receiver Jameson Williams picked up another vote of support, as he now appears twice in our Database. Rounding things out is Utah linebacker Devin Lloyd, who maintains his one selection from last week.

Honestly, at this point the Vikings picking anything but a cornerback at #12 would be a significant upset. . .but there are still about three and a half weeks to go for this process to sort itself out, so we’ll see how things work out.

Here are our graphics for this week, starting with your donut chart for this week’s selections.

Usually if a player is getting less than 5% of the picks, I move them “off” the donut so that it can be clear which slice belongs to them.

Finally, our “Jell-o salad” graph for the week continues to show a larger and larger amount of purple dominating the selections this week. That’s the color we’ve chosen for the defensive backs in this year’s Database.

As always, you can embiggen both pictures by clicking on them in a cromulent manner, which should allow you to read them more easily.

That’s our Mock Draft Database for this week, ladies and gentlemen! We’ve only got three or four more of these to go and then the 2022 NFL Draft will officially be upon us.