A pair of guys who may be in the Vikings‘ sights come draft day tested positive for marijuana at the combine according to NFL Draft Bible. One of the two players, WR Percy Harvin, is scheduled to visit the team when they host a throng of draft prospects next week, while the second, CB Vontae Davis, though not scheduled to visit, has been named as a possible target for the Vikes when they pick #22 overall (the third failed drug testee, B.J. Raji, is not on Minnesota’s radar).
I was actually starting to be sold on the idea of the Vikes drafting Harvin – assuming OT Eben Britton is no longer available when #22 rolls around – but this changes my mind a bit. Not that I necessarily care about a guy smoking pot – in fact, I don’t care a lick about it; the NFL is full of guys who like the hippie lettuce, and the majority of them show up for work on Sunday and are solid team guys. However, if you’re a young draft prospect like Harvin or Davis, and you know you’ve got this drug test coming up, and the whole idea now is to make a good impression on your potential future employers…call me silly, but wouldn’t you hope a guy in that position would be able to suck it up and lay off the weed? At least long enough to be clean for the test?
This incident calls both players’ self-discipline and commitment into question. That might not matter for a team like the Raiders or Cowboys, who only care about amassing talent, but it does matter to Zygi Wilf, Brad Childress and the Vikings, who have run guys like Dwight Smith out of town largely on the basis of off-field shenanigans. Wouldn’t shock me to see the Vikes drop Harvin off their draft board entirely.