The Minnesota Vikings entered the spring with a long list of offseason priorities, chief among them bolstering an inconsistent cornerback room. Their top three cornerbacks in 2023, Akayleb Evans, Mekhi Blackmon and Byron Murphy, Jr., were all set to return, but it was obvious the team needed reinforcements.
Evans was inconsistent in his first year as a starter. He looked reliable early in the season, but the Vikings benched him for two of the final three weeks of the season. According to Next Gen Stats, he allowed five touchdown passes and had one interception. One potential interception went through his hands and ended up in the hands of a receiver who scored the game-winning touchdown.
Murphy was Minnesota’s best cornerback but not a favorite of Pro Football Focus (PFF), earning a 58 grade for the season. But he played both slot and traditional cornerback, and the defense struggled in the final three games of the season when he was out of the lineup. Although Blackmon shined as a rookie, earning a 71.8 grade for the season, he still misjudged crucial passes, ultimately leading to losses to the Denver Broncos and Cincinnati Bengals.
Those inconsistencies didn’t put any of the three cornerbacks on the line, but entering the offseason there was no depth behind them. NaJee Thompson was the only other cornerback to secure a spot on the roster and was merely an ace on special teams as a rookie. Andrew Booth, Jr., a second-round pick in the 2022 draft, was the only viable option other than him. However, he played just 151 defensive snaps in 10 games and never looked like an NFL starting cornerback.
With that in mind, the Vikings used resources from free agency and the draft to bolster the cornerback department. They signed Shaquill Griffin, a seven-year veteran who has played almost exclusively outside cornerback and made the Pro Bowl in 2019. In the fourth round, the Vikings selected Khyree Jackson, a 6-foot-4 cornerback from Oregon. Coaches praised Jackson throughout OTAs and mini-camps, and there was optimism that both players could provide depth and fight for a spot in the starting lineup.
That all changed on July 6, however, when Jackson was killed in a tragic car accident. A few weeks later, Blackmon tore his ACL on the team’s first day of practice. Suddenly, the newly filled cornerback room was empty again. With training camp already underway, most of the top free agents were off the market. But thanks to a decent $26 million in salary cap space through July, they had money to spend on acquiring quality backups.
Their first move was to sign Jacobi Francis, a third-year cornerback who went undrafted in 2022. They then signed veterans Bobby McCain and Fabian Moreau. Their last move was to trade Booth, who had shown no progress in training camp, to the Dallas Cowboys for Nahshon Wright, a third-round pick in the 2021 draft.
Francis and Wright feel more like camp bodies. Although they are both young, Francis has only played in five games in two seasons. Wright has made just three starts in his career, none of them in 2023.
The two veterans make the final 53-man roster even more exciting. The Miami Dolphins drafted McCain in 2015, and he played the 2019 and 2020 seasons under Brian Flores, who was Miami’s head coach from 2019 to 2021. McCain came into the league as a cornerback, but has spent most of his time as a safety since 2019. However, in 2022, he spent 404 of his 970 snaps in the slot.
Moreau is entering his eighth season in the league. He started 10 times in 2023, plays exclusively as an outside cornerback, and has never graded above 65.7 in a season. However, he has never graded below 52.7 since his rookie season.
Still, none of these signings were true game-changers. Their skills and accolades weren’t much more spectacular than the Vikings’ before training camp. So Minnesota added one final piece last week when they signed Stephon Gilmore to a one-year deal worth up to $10 million.
Although Gilmore turns 34 in September, he has started 33 of 34 games over the past two seasons. He finished with grades of 79.1 and 74.4 in those two seasons, respectively, showing he can still be effective. Like McCain, he knows Flores because their time in Foxborough overlapped in 2017 and 2018, when Flores was the New England Patriots’ linebackers coach. They won a Super Bowl together in 2018, and Gilmore was a first-team All-Pro that year. A year later, Gilmore was named Defensive Player of the Year.
Like most cornerbacks on the roster, Gilmore has played almost exclusively as an outside cornerback. He is a sure candidate for one of the starting outside spots and Murphy is a sure candidate for the slot corner position. That leaves an exciting battle for the starting spot at the other cornerback position.
It’s been an unconventional path to get here, but the cornerback room is no longer the question mark it was when the 2023 season ended. That’s remarkable considering how things looked a month ago. The Vikings now have a combination of veterans and young players who may not be elite players individually, but can form a viable group.
