500-pound squat!!<\/a>) He said he tries to emulate Saints RB Alvin Kamara and employs an “underdog mentality.”<\/p>\n“Being a smaller back with a smaller frame, people definitely had questions and concerns about that, but overall, the Minnesota Vikings trusted it, they believed in me and they wanted me be here with them,” Claiborne said shortly after laughing as his phone was blowing up. “That’s what I’m super excited about.”<\/p>\n
Claiborne said he was amazed by his Top 30 visit with the club earlier this month.<\/p>\n
“When I initially got out there, I was definitely surprised to see how gorgeous everything was. It’s kind of on its own island. The team hotel is great. All those saunas are something that I love to get into for some recovery stuff. And just very nice people, coaches, you know, met all the coaches and that was also great,” Claiborne explained excitedly. “Minnesota is definitely one of those places where they do care a lot about their players. I actually got a chance to talk to the head coach, Kevin O’Connell, and we got to sit down and have a 1-on-1 about some of his players and his vision as a head coach and how much he truly cares about his players and wanting them to have success. That was a great time, a great meeting. Those are great people. And like I said, I’m happy to be a Viking and I’m ready to get to work.”<\/p>\n
A four-star recruit at tiny-sized King William High School in Virginia (Brugler noted an enrollment of fewer than 700 students), Claiborne racked up 52 TDs (47 rushing, four receiving, one returning) as a senior, one shy of the single-season state record achieved by Patriots 2025 first-round pick TreVeyon Henderson.<\/p>\n
Claiborne will enter a Vikings RB room that returns all-purpose veteran Aaron Jones, Sr., and bruising burster Jordan Mason (he shared high praise for both vets), as well as nifty runner\/receiver Zavier Scott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brugler compared Claiborne to a “diet” version of Dolphins Pro Bowl RB De’Von Achane, who was drafted 84th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[263003,222327,22158,28931,22159,349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-607382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-draft-pick-articles","9":"tag-news-draft","10":"tag-news-index","11":"tag-news-press-release","12":"tag-news-team","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}