Vikings Receive Top Consensus 2020 Draft Grade of all 32 NFL Teams
By all accounts, the Vikings had a highly successful 2020 draft. They got great value with their two first-round picks, took two guys with plenty of upside on Day 2, and are likely to hit on at least a few of their 11 picks on Day 3.
In fact, national analysts seem to think that the Vikings had the best draft of any team in the entire NFL. Rene Bugner (@RNBWCV on Twitter) took the full team-by-team draft grades of 13 prominent writers – including SI's own Andy Benoit, ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr., and NFL.com's Chad Reuter – and compiled them into a consensus ranking. Bugner converted each letter grade into a GPA scale.
Here are the results.
As you can see, the Vikings received an A+ or A grade from nine of the 13 writers and an A- from three others. Their worst score was a B+ from Mark Maske of the Washington Post. The Vikings' overall GPA was a 3.92, which was the best of any team by almost 0.1 points.
I love how Bugner put together this chart, especially because you can see which writers were tougher critics than others. Reuter only gave out one grade below a B, while Maske only gave out three A's.
The other thing that jumps out about this chart is that while the Vikings are in first, some people in Minnesota might be just as happy to see the Packers in last. Their 1.31 GPA is the worst by an incredible margin, as Green Bay only got one grade above a C+. The Packers' approach to this draft was a bizarre one. Instead of focusing on filling the immediate needs of a team that just made the NFC title game, GM Brian Gutekunst traded up in the first round for a backup quarterback and then drafted a third-string running back in the second round.
The Bears also did poorly, receiving the 25th-best GPA out of 32. Among the Vikings' NFC North foes, only the Lions were viewed as having a decent draft.
The crucial disclaimer here is that immediate draft grades don't mean a whole lot. A draft class can't truly be graded for at least a few seasons, and any of the teams who scored poorly could easily make this list look foolish down the road. But that doesn't mean they're worthless or pointless. It's still a valuable exercise to evaluate teams' draft decisions with the information we have available right now.
As things stand, the Vikings have set themselves up very nicely for the future, while two of their main division rivals have not.
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