{"id":704060,"date":"2026-01-25T14:21:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T14:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/704060\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T14:21:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T14:21:31","slug":"mel-kiper-mock-draft-who-does-he-have-the-vikings-taking-at-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/704060\/","title":{"rendered":"Mel Kiper Mock Draft: Who Does He Have the Vikings Taking at #18?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is, officially, draft season for fans of the Minnesota Vikings (and for fans of 27 other NFL teams), and the unofficial start of draft season for a lot of us comes with the first mock draft from Mel Kiper. . .dramatic pause. . .draft expert. He\u2019s released his first mock of the year<\/a> over at ESPN, so we\u2019ll have a look at who he\u2019s got the Vikings taking with the 18th overall pick.<\/p>\n

In his first mock, Kiper has the Vikings taking Louisiana State cornerback Mansoor Delane. Here\u2019s what he\u2019s got to say about the selection:<\/p>\n

Delane would bring top-end ball skills and some really good coverage technique to Minnesota. The Vikings redid their cornerback room in 2025 free agency, but they still have depth problems behind Byron Murphy Jr.<\/a> and Isaiah Rodgers<\/a>. Plus, Minnesota managed just eight interceptions this season (tied for sixth fewest). Well, over the past two campaigns, Delane has six picks and 18 pass breakups. That\u2019s impact production, and coordinator Brian Flores would love to get a player such as Delane into his unit.<\/p>\n

Birds gonna fly, fish gonna swim, and Mel Kiper gonna mock a cornerback to the Vikings in Round 1. At least, it seems like that\u2019s the way it goes most years, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

I do think that the Vikings could use another player at the cornerback position. I will admit that my bandwidth for scouting a lot of college players isn\u2019t quite what it used to be so I\u2019m not sure where Delane ranks among the cornerbacks that played in college this past year, but I\u2019m going to make an effort to look more into those sorts of things over the course of the offseason in an effort to get some decent pre-draft content out there for folks to chew on between now and 23 April.<\/p>\n

(Yes, the 2026 NFL Draft is, officially, less than three months away. It\u2019s going to be here before we know it.)<\/p>\n

So, what do you folks think about what Mel Kiper has the Vikings doing in Round 1 in his first mock of the year? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is, officially, draft season for fans of the Minnesota Vikings (and for fans of 27 other NFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,233,259,100098,1312,2529,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-704060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-vikings","11":"tag-minnesota-vikings-2026-offseason","12":"tag-minnesota-vikings-news","13":"tag-minnesotavikings","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115956186458287722","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}