In the fifth round, the Vikings drafted undersized Missouri middle linebacker Kentrell Brothers primarily for depth and special teams with bonus kick-blocking ability.
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The 22-year-old has only been playing football for about five years and none of those years were at a collegiate-level. Then suddenly draft experts started talking the kid up. At his workout, Boehringer posted numbers that would make any scout drool.
His combination of size (6-foot-4, 229 pounds) and speed (a sub-4.4-second 40-yard dash) intrigued the Vikings.
Now, whether or not the phone call had any actual effect on the Vikings’s selection is up for debate, though a tweet from Minnesota proves at least that Mike Zimmer heard Mayock out.
Boehringer had 70 catches for 1,461 yards and 16 touchdowns in 21 games with the Unicorns in 2015 and was named the GFL’s Rookie of the Year.
Boehringer blew NFL scouts away at the Florida Atlantic Pro Day to put himself on the 2016 NFL Draft radar. They wanted to see if Boehringer could actually understand the terminology and run the routes.
Spielman laughed and said coach Mike Zimmer asked Spielman the exact same question. Several teams really did work on him, and the Vikings were among them. Some scoffed at the idea that Boehringer could actually go from complete unknown to draft pick in a scant few weeks, but that’s exactly what happened.
Sixth-round pick Moritz Boehringer has signed his rookie contract, the Vikings announced this evening.
The second wide receiver drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the 2016 NFL Draft was big news. Not long after, the Vikings made the pick.
Boehringer didn’t even know what American football was until he was 17, when he watched a YouTube video of Adrian Peterson.
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GM Rick Spielman, however, used one of the team’s 30 pre-draft visits on Boehringer and described him as “off-the-charts smart”, helping his cause for acclimation into the NFL.
