If there is to be a trade — especially to bring someone in — the Vikings’ draft pick collection is going to come into focus.
Give a pile of credit to Craig Peters of the Vikings’ website. He sifts through all the pesky details, listing out the upcoming picks that are sitting within Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s coffers. Very likely, the GM will need to lean on these picks if there’s a desire to jump into the trading frenzy that will take place prior to the Tuesday, November 4th deadline.
The Vikings’ Draft Pick Collection
Every team begins with seven selections.
Across seven rounds, the NFL’s thirty-two teams all get a pick. There’s then more draft selections tossed into the mix due to a league mechanism referred to as “compensatory picks,” extra draft selections that get divvied up based on the amount of (qualifying) free agent talent that gets lost. Easy to get tangled in the weeds of this sort of thing and it has been a reasonably robust topic within Vikings analysis.
(Nick Korte of Over the Cap is a very helpful person to follow if this sort of thing is of interest).
As for where things stand currently for Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and the Vikings, there are eight draft selections. Per the digging and tracking from Craig Peters, the picks are as follows:
- 1st Round
- 2nd Round
- 3rd Round
- 5th Round
- 6th Round
- 7th Round (X3)
A pretty beefy collection, all things considered. The back end of the draft has been hollowed out a touch due to previous trades, but there’s still a nice group of picks.
Consider, as well, that there appears to be a minimum of one compensatory pick going to Minnesota. The Sam Darnold departure should lead to a 3rd being added to the Vikings’ draft picks. More specifically, that’s going to be the No. 97 selection.
Peters commented on the comp picks: “The Vikings anticipate receiving compensatory picks based on free agency departures during 2025 free agency, particularly for quarterbacks Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones. Compensatory picks are awarded between the Super Bowl and the draft.”
If there’s another loss in Week 9, the Vikings could look to move on from strong veteran players. At least a handful of players would be attractive to rival teams. Shipping out veteran talent would help to alleviate the upcoming cap crunch. Even better is that onboarding the young talent via the draft is a tried-and-true way of balancing the books since rookie contracts are cost-controlled, meaning they’re artificially cheap.
Oh, and another thing: the 2026 NFL Draft takes place from April 23rd to April 25th. If the season ended today, the Vikings would own the No. 12 selection.
