Should the Vikings be all-in on Derek Stingley Jr.?
The final consequential pro day of the year was held this week, and it sent Vikings Twitter into a frenzy. For the first time in this entire draft process, we saw LSU cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. out on the field doing something of note.
A Lisfranc injury kept him off the field since September of 2021 so he did not participate in any physical drills at the Combine and has limited tape from his final season in Baton Rouge.
The results were impressive. (Note: His 40-yd time was clocked at 4.37 unofficially, but was later changed to 4.44.)
Here’s how that stacks up in Relative Athletic Score:
Graphic via the website Relative Athletic Scores
For someone coming off an injury, it was encouraging for Stingley to flash the same speed that was evident when he burst on the scene in 2019.
The performance caused betting markets to shift significantly. Before April 6, Stingley’s over/under draft position was 12.5 weighted towards the over, meaning the market believed it was more likely he was drafted past the Vikings' No. 12 pick. Now, less than a week later, his over/under is 10.5 weighted towards the under.
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Why? His pro day performance, while positive, didn’t adequately answer any of the major question marks that have caused him to slide down draft boards.
The two major knocks on Stingley have been:
- His durability
- His 2019 play doesn’t match his performance from his final two years.
While it’s a good sign that Stingley didn’t look severely hampered by his injury, a pro day performance that Stingley has spent the entire offseason training for shouldn’t suddenly show us that he’s fully healthy. For teams, the judgment should be held for private meetings and in their medical checks. What Stingley did in an assortment of drills on a Wednesday without any pads should not be the deciding factor that swings his draft position.
It is also not a marker of his long-term physical health.
While the recovery from a Lisfranc injury can be time-consuming and tedious, it is not an injury that severely alters an athlete’s career. According to a 2016 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, players who suffered the injury did not have a statistically significant decline in career length or on-field performance.
The reality is that he has not been healthy since 2019. He played in just 10 games since that season. Along with the Lisfranc injury, he missed time with an ankle injury. His weight ranks in the 40th percentile, meaning he’s a few pounds lighter than Cam Dantzler, who faced similar questions of whether he can hold up in the NFL.
Stingley’s athletic traits have always been a pro for him, going back to the days when he was in consideration for the No. 1 overall pick. The expectation should’ve been for him to test well.
In a recent podcast episode of The Athletic NFL Show, The Athletic’s Dane Brugler and NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein broke down Stingley’s pro day. Here’s what Zierlein said:
“His numbers came in at fairly average for an NFL starter, which is fine. That’s not bad. His vertical leap, his broad jump, his 40-time, his size are basically average for the NFL starter, which is what you want. That to me was never an issue. Height, weight, speed is not a concern. Explosiveness is not a concern. The [other] concern is the concern you have that can not be alleviated through a pro day.”
That of course is his play in the last two seasons.
“His best tape is from 2019. His best football was pre-pandemic. So how do we work through that with his traits?” Zierlein continued.
After carding a 91.7 PFF grade in 2019, he had a 72.2 grade in 2020 and a 66.6 grade in 2021. His completion percentage allowed was 34.7% in 2019. That jumped to 46.7% in 2020 and 60% in 2021.
If he blew the doors off every other cornerback with his testing numbers, it might have completely changed the odds of him being available to the Vikings at 12 but his 40-time was the same as Trent McDuffie’s and three-tenths slower than Ahmad ‘Sauce’ Gardner. McDuffie’s relative athletic score, a 9.48, is considerably higher than Stingley’s.
Whether or not his performance at the pro day should impact his draft position, it looks like it will.
Here are a couple quotes from Brugler and Zierlien’s conversation that are notable for the Vikings.
“I think Stingely goes inside the first 13 picks,” Zierlien said. “My guess is [pick] 12 is the latest he falls to the Minnesota Vikings.”
“Twelve to the Vikings is the perfect spot for him,” Brugler said. “In talking to different people about Stingley, someone mentioned how he kind of needs it. If you expect him to come in and be the alpha, he’s going to let you down. But if he comes in, you give him a chance to grow and mature. He goes to someplace where there’s a big brother, he’s going to be able to do that. And what better place than Minnesota where Patrick Peterson is back for a year. That would be the perfect landing spot for Stingley.”
So what effect does this have on the Vikings?
Well, it leaves the Vikings at an interesting spot. If we believe the betting markets are a good indicator of draft position, Minnesota will likely miss out on both top cornerback prospects (Gardner and Stingley Jr.), the top four pass rushers (Hutchinson, Thibodeaux, Walker, Johnson) and potentially the top safety prospect (Hamilton). Their respective draft odds have them all as top-10 picks.
Those players represent clear top tiers at their positions. According to NFL Mock Draft Database’s consensus big board, Gardner is ranked No. 5 overall and Stingley is No. 12. Trent McDuffie is the next best cornerback prospect, ranked No. 21. At EDGE, those top four pass rushers all sit in the top-11 of the big board, while Purdue’s George Karlaftis is No. 18. Both represent a significant drop in value, and notably, are several slots below the Vikings’ No. 12 pick.
So the question becomes, do the Vikings view either McDuffie or Karlaftis (or another prospect) higher than the consensus? There are certainly some draft analysts that do. PFF has McDuffie as its No. 8 prospect and Bleacher Report ranks Karlaftis No. 6 on its big board. But those rankings are outliers. That means if one of those two players is the Vikings’ pick, they believe they see something that the majority of other draft analysts don’t.
That’s where the Vikings have found themselves at the No. 12 pick, with doubt that a top-tier player at a position of need will be there for them. And in a position where they could be forced to reach if they have their hearts set on a certain position.
If this is the way the draft breaks for the Vikings, trading down should be at the top of their to-do list. Obviously, that is easier said than done, but in this scenario where all the top CBs, EDGEs, and Hamilton are gone, it’s likely only one quarterback has been taken.
Suddenly, the No. 12 pick could be extremely valuable to several teams. The Saints and Steelers check out as two of the top possibilities that could be interested in whichever QB falls between Malik Willis, Kenny Pickett, or even Desmond Ridder.
Trading with either (the Saints have the No. 16 and 19 picks, Steelers have No. 20) would make a lot of sense based on the consensus big board. It would put Minnesota back in a spot where their needs at CB and EDGE are met with value. It’s also likely one of the top wide receiver prospects would still be there at that point.
