5 best Minnesota Vikings sixth-round picks of the last decade

Brandon Fusco – OG (2011)

Now we are going back a bit. Brandon Fusco was the first-ever player drafted from Slippery Rock and he went on to have a very good and lengthy NFL career.

Fusco appeared in three contests during his rookie season and he then went on to be a 16-game starter for the Vikings in year two. He started 15 more matchups during the following season for Minnesota and he then was offered a five-year, $25 million contract extension from the team. Unfortunately, he ended up getting hurt in 2014 and only played in three games.

Fusco wasn’t quite the same after his injury. He did end up starting 30 more games for the Vikings, but he didn’t play as well as he did during his first couple of years with the team.

He was released in the 2017 offseason and then signed with the San Francisco 49ers. He started every game for them that year and finished his career with the Atlanta Falcons in 2018.

Fusco is arguably the Vikings’ best sixth-round draft pick of the last decade. He started 64 games for the team and he played pretty well overall as both a run and pass blocker.

Getting this kind of performance out of a sixth-round choice doesn’t happen very often. Rick Spielman took a chance on the small school standout and he was well rewarded for the risk.