Josh Metellus
Minnesota VikingsModel Score
How good he is at what he is supposed to be doing, out of 100. Not a projection of what he will do next, and not a read on his contract. Median is about 70, and a 95 is rare. How it is built →
Season Stats · 14 games
Draft & College
He went about where consensus had him.
Covers the college seasons in our data, which does not always reach back to a player's first year.
Comps
STM Take
Tier 6 (#42) in 2024 to tier 2 (#13) breakout in 2025 is a 29-spot one-year jump for a 205th overall 6th-round pick. The Michigan Big Ten 6th-round origin plus the Brian Flores defensive scheme appears to be the catalyst. The 2026 question is whether Metellus holds tier 3 or better across a full second year of elite production or whether the 2025 finish was a one-year context spike.
Metellus came out of Michigan as the Minnesota Vikings' 6th-round pick (205th overall) in 2020. He has anchored the Vikings' safety rotation across six seasons under defensive coordinator Brian Flores. His STTM career runs tier 6 (#43) in 2022, tier 8 (#63) in 2023, tier 6 (#42) in 2024, and tier 2 (#13) breakout in 2025.
Strengths
- Tier 2 (#13) breakout in year six as a 205th overall 6th-round pick puts him in the rare outlier-positive class at the S position.
- Michigan Big Ten 6th-round origin plus the Brian Flores defensive scheme creates the structural environment for late-bloomer development.
Concerns
- Single tier 2 finish in an otherwise tier 6-8 STTM history puts the 2025 production on a small sample with significant downside risk.
- Minnesota's broader defensive identity around Brian Flores's exotic scheme puts continued Metellus ceiling partly scheme-dependent.
What to watch: Whether Metellus holds tier 3 or better across the full 2026 Vikings season, the threshold for confirming the 2025 breakout was structural.