With just three days away from the NFL Draft, the Minnesota Vikings still have a lot of different options available to them. They could build up the interior on either the offensive line or defensive line, fortify the secondary, or go and get an offensive weapon to make life easier for J.J. McCarthy.

As we get closer to the first round being so close, we are going to hear a lot of different things, as the 564 industry mock drafts I've gathered since the beginning of the year. 

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Two Vikings beat writers target talented offensive lineman in final NFL Mock Draft

One of the intriguing things you can look at when it comes to mock drafts is how those closest to the team end up having the most intel. Those individuals are usually the beat writers who are in the building regularly.

There are two beat writers who either wrote their own, or participated in a mock draft who went with North Dakota State offensive lineman Grey Zabel. The first is The Athletic's Alec Lewis.

Zabel is in a cluster of interior offensive linemen who make sense for the Vikings. The pick could just as easily be Alabama’s Tyler Booker, but because Booker was the selection in my first mock draft of the cycle, we’ll go with Zabel here. At 6-foot-6, he’s huge. He is also, as the evaluators say, light on his feet. Zabel played tackle last season and was the highest graded pass protector at the position in the FCS, according to Pro Football Focus. He could start immediately at left guard and has the versatility to play other spots in the future. Other interior offensive linemen — like Ohio State’s Donovan Jackson and Texas’ Kelvin Banks Jr. — could fit if Zabel is taken before No. 26. 

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The interesting way that Lewis framed his analysis was that it could have been Tyler Booker. That framing says that Lewis would have sent the Vikings an interior offensive lineman no matter what, which is really interesting. Is that player going to have that much of an impact as the starting left guard when Blake Brandel was really good with Christian Darrisaw healthy? I have doubts.

The other beat writer was The Star Tribune's Ben Goessling, who participated in LA Times' Sam Farmer's mock draft, where he also took Zabel.

“The Vikings have spent the offseason upgrading a protection unit that gave up nine sacks in a wild-card loss to the Rams, but after they signed Ryan Kelly and Will Fries, they could use one more addition at left guard. That’ll lead them to Zabel, who played all five positions at North Dakota State but would be a natural fit at left guard, where he’d line up between Kelly and Christian Darrisaw and add some size, tenacity and athletic ability to the middle of the line.”

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Goessling had a different way to look at the selection. It was based more on the fact that it was a need to essentially put the finishing touches on a full fledged retool. 

Is that the best route for the Vikings to end up selecting Zabel? I would say no, especially since Zabel has an early round three grade from me. However, if the Vikings do view Zabel as an impactful player in year one, the pick does make sense.

We will know what they think in three days, but it would be a trend-breaking selection, especially considering that the Vikings haven't taken a single player from a non-power-4 school before the seventh round under Adofo-Mensah.

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