Vikings drafting a WR in the first round reportedly not a priority in 2020

In a move that ultimately felt inevitable, the Minnesota Vikings made the decision to trade star wide receiver Stefon Diggs to the Buffalo Bills last month.

With the trade, the Vikings immediately created a hole in their receiver depth chart for next season. Minnesota still has Adam Thielen on the roster, but the talent level takes a dramatic decrease when looking at the rest of the pass-catchers the team currently has to choose from.

Without a ton of money to spend, the Vikings didn’t really have the option to replace Diggs with one of the top free-agent receivers this year. Minnesota was able to sign Tajae Sharpe, but he’s not expected to have much of a chance to win the team’s No. 2 job behind Thielen for next season.

When will the Minnesota Vikings add a receiver in the 2020 NFL Draft?

Since the Vikings currently have two selections in the first round of this year’s NFL Draft, many have assumed they will use one of these picks to add a top receiving prospect to their roster. However, this might not end up being what actually happens.

According to Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller, selecting a receiver is not a, “Day 1 priority,” for Minnesota this year. Instead, Miller has heard that the Vikings could wait until the second or third round to add a new pass-catcher and use their first two picks to select defensive and offensive line prospects.

This might be disappointing for some to hear, but it makes sense for Minnesota to take this approach given how deep this year’s group of receiving prospects is supposed to be. The Vikings could still easily add a starting-caliber wide receiver in the second or third round this year if they opt to use their first two picks of the draft on prospects from other position groups.

Not drafting a receiver in the first round might actually be the best decision for Minnesota to make anyways. In the recent past, the NFL has seen the majority of their top pass-catchers come from the second round or later.

Receiver obviously isn’t the Vikings’ only need heading into this year’s draft, so using their first two selections to add prospects from position groups that aren’t very deep would be wise.

Minnesota fans also shouldn’t get discouraged if the team doesn’t draft a new pass-catcher during the first round in a few weeks. The Vikings just had the NFL’s top receiving duo for the last few years in Diggs and Thielen and neither of them were selected in the first four rounds of the draft.