Minnesota Vikings fans are not alone in wondering what Kyle Hamilton could have become in Brian Flores' defense. Kevin O'Connell has now admitted he has also thought about what might have been if the Vikings had drafted the Baltimore Ravens star in 2022.
Before Thursday's joint practice with Baltimore, O'Connell was asked whether he ever looks at Hamilton and wonders “what if” about that draft. “I have a time or two, yes,” O'Connell said.
Considering Hamilton has become a two-time first-team All-Pro and three-time Pro Bowler while Lewis Cine -- now with the Eagles -- never started a game for Minnesota, O'Connell's regret is understandable. It also gave him another opportunity to send a stray in the direction of former Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
Kyle Hamilton makes the Lewis Cine miss impossible for the Minnesota Vikings to ignore
The reasons why Adofo-Mensah is no longer the Vikings' general manager are clear. No. 1 on the list is a shoddy draft record, which started with a historically bad 2022 class and never got markedly better.
In the first round of his first draft as general manager, Adofo-Mensah shockingly traded down from the 12th overall pick to No. 32 in a deal with the Detroit Lions. Detroit, which had acquired the final pick of the first round in the Matthew Stafford-Jared Goff trade with the Los Angeles Rams, moved up to take wide receiver Jameson Williams.
With a need at safety, Cine was the pick for the Vikings at No. 32. We know how that turned out.
Cine spent three years in Minnesota but appeared in just 10 regular-season games, never started and registered one total tackle. Meanwhile, Hamilton, whom the Ravens selected 14th overall, has started 52 of his 64 career games while amassing 355 tackles, eight sacks, five interceptions, 36 pass breakups and six forced fumbles.
The comparison is about as unforgiving as it gets. Hamilton has become one of the NFL's best and most versatile safeties, while the Vikings got virtually nothing from their first-round pick at the same position.
With Hamilton and the Ravens in town for two joint practices and a preseason game, visions of what he could have been as a multifaceted force in Flores' defense have become even harder to ignore.
Judd Zulgad of SKOR North followed up his initial question by suggesting Flores, who became Minnesota's defensive coordinator in 2023, might look at O'Connell and ask, “Why didn't you draft him?”
“He doesn't always look at me when he says it...” O'Connell said.
That comment came across as sarcastic, but there may have been a grain of truth behind it. Flores surely imagined what he could do with Hamilton if the Vikings had simply stayed at No. 12 and drafted him the year before Flores arrived.
O'Connell finished by praising how Hamilton has developed and noting how fortunate the Ravens are to have him. But his acknowledgement that he has wondered “what if,” followed by the joke about where Flores directs his draft-day criticism, also landed as another stray toward Adofo-Mensah.
O'Connell has, covertly or otherwise, been at the forefront of the effort to make Adofo-Mensah the scapegoat for the Vikings' failure last season and for why the four drafts before this year went so poorly.
Adofo-Mensah deserves plenty of blame for misses like Cine over Hamilton. But he was not the only person involved in those decisions, just as O'Connell cannot pretend the selection of J.J. McCarthy happened without meaningful input from the supposed “quarterback whisperer.”
That will not necessarily stop O'Connell from continuing to insinuate that Adofo-Mensah was the primary problem until that concept has run its course.
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