Private workouts, public lunches and Justin Jefferson: How the Vikings will choose their next QB

"You can ask them questions and see how fast they remember things, how fast they're digesting the information," he added. "How clearly can they put that information into real, tangible things that then, I can use as a coach for feedback? You can go on the grass and see if they understand how we want to set our feet and eyes on this drop, or, when we talk about pocket movement, what that looks like. When we talk about on-schedule versus off-schedule, red zone, third down, how it fits within the framework of, not our system, but the system we want to build for them."

O'Connell will often ask a player to pick his favorite spot for lunch on campus, with the Vikings picking up the tab.

"I want to see how they interact with folks," the coach said, "because building-changing quarterbacks, they don't just change the facilities. Any room they ever walk into, they light it up. They change it, they impact it and I think you can see that on display in an authentic way when you do the full process with those trips."

With the 11th pick in a draft where the top three teams (Chicago, Washington and New England) could all take quarterbacks, the Vikings aren't guaranteed to land the quarterback they want. The stakes of the decision, especially if it involves a trade up, mean the Vikings need full agreement about a player who could define General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's and O'Connell's tenure together.

The Vikings' decisionmakers have the support of ownership; co-owner Mark Wilf said Monday the Wilfs will leave it to Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell to work through the quarterback evaluation as they see fit. They ultimately don't control which quarterbacks will be available to them on draft night.

If there's one thing they can control, it's a predraft process O'Connell hopes will reveal as much about the rookie quarterbacks as it can.

"I think (pro days) are great. I think the guys are doing a great job with them," O'Connell said. "It's valuable for us as a piece of it, but nothing compares to really completing that whole process with a visit, or maybe coming to the Twin Cities for one of our (top-) 30 visits."

_____