Field Yates expects Minnesota Vikings to cause first drama in NFL Draft order

With the 2024 NFL Draft creeping up, there’s still plenty of drama to unfold. And ESPN draft analyst Field Yates suspects it will get kicked off with a trade involving the Minnesota Vikings moving up into the Top 5.

Joining the ESPN College GameDay podcast earlier in the week, Yates shared how he thinks the early phases of the first round will shake out. He anticipates quarterbacks will go in the first three picks, leaving the Arizona Cardinals to take their pick at No. 4, or trade out.

And with the Los Angeles Chargers picking at No. 5, Yates sees the No. 4 or No. 5 overall picks as the key spots for the Vikings to be targeting in a trade, us the No. 11 and No. 23 overall picks to move up.

“It’s the possibility of Minnesota moving somewhere into the four or five range,” Yates said of what could kick off draft chaos.

Yates thinks it will set up this way with the Chicago Bears, Washington Commanders and New England Patriots taking quarterbacks: Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye, respectively.

That leaves the Cardinals to trade back with the Vikings or take wideout Marvin Harrison Jr., then leaving the Vikings to trade with the Chargers. And with the Vikings seemingly determined to get in on one of the top four quarterbacks, Yates sees them as the prime candidates to move in.

“So I think that leads us to the fourth, five range,” Yates said. “And can Minnesota get up there to, presumably, take J.J. McCarthy from Michigan?”

And as the draft discourse winds down in the hours before the event, Yates is happy to see some wacky rumors and narratives get put to bed.

Once the picks start getting made, all the projections and innuendo start to go out the window as teams reveal their true intentions for the NFL Draft.

“Because while there is a ton of talk, and one of the realities about the NFL Draft is that it’s probably like two or three weeks longer than it should be, in terms of keeping reasonable discourse,” Yates said. “Because we start to get to the final seven, eight, nine, 10 days from the start of the NFL Draft and you start to hear things that simply don’t align with everything your eyes have told you and that your sources have told you for the past 11 and a half months.”