{"id":870508,"date":"2026-04-20T08:31:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/870508\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:31:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T08:31:49","slug":"mailbag-vikings-launch-2026-offseason-program-as-draft-week-arrives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/870508\/","title":{"rendered":"Mailbag: Vikings Launch 2026 Offseason Program as Draft Week Arrives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have a few draft &#8220;Don&#8217;ts&#8221; and one draft &#8220;Do&#8221; to suggest to Executive Vice President of Football Operations Rob Brzezinski and his staff.<\/p>\n<p>1) Don&#8217;t trade with the Packers, Lions or Bears!<\/p>\n<p>2) Don&#8217;t trade J.J. McCarthy! If you do, please DON&#8217;T trade him to an NFC team!<\/p>\n<p>3) Don&#8217;t expect to receive an A as a post-draft grade! Even if you select the same player that an analyst had you selecting in their mock draft, a player that they have spent the last few months pushing as the best possible pick for the Vikings, the curve has already been established, and we&#8217;ll be receiving an average at-best post-draft grade.<\/p>\n<p>1) If Spencer Fano gets past the Ravens at 14, I hope Rob&#8217;s group will consider contacting the Buccaneers and Jets about trading in front of the Lions. He would be a great addition or at the very least our interest would force the Lions to have to ante up an additional pick.<\/p>\n<p>Last year&#8217;s coverage was GREAT, especially the post-selection calls with the players.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bill Dunn in Fairfield, Connecticut<\/p>\n<p>The Vikings have established their philosophy for this year&#8217;s draft and will apply it with Brzezinski leading the personnel department and coaching staff. I get the sentiment of not trading within the division since doing so with Detroit and Green Bay in 2022 didn&#8217;t pan out the best for Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>I anticipate the Vikings status at quarterback will be among the topics handled today by O&#8217;Connell.<\/p>\n<p>Report cards issued so quickly after a class has been assembled can be a little premature and result in grades that can change, but we&#8217;ve assembled a report card for several draft years and will do so again after the draft.<\/p>\n<p>The mid-to-late teens are an interesting location to enter a draft. There are likely to be some outcomes that are predicted by many, and there could be some that are unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>Although I&#8217;m not involved in the content capture of the calls, I enjoy them greatly. I know colleagues appreciate your compliment. We are all ready for the draft and look forward to covering this year&#8217;s action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have a few draft &#8220;Don&#8217;ts&#8221; and one draft &#8220;Do&#8221; to suggest to Executive Vice President of Football&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,233,259,2529,4660,270,1025,4661,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-870508","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-minnesotavikings","12":"tag-monday-morning-mailbag","13":"tag-news-draft","14":"tag-news-index","15":"tag-news-mailbag","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116436107477463751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870508","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=870508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}