NFL Combine 2013: Te’o hoax making Vikings dig more into social media

The Manti Te’o fake girlfriend hoax is changing how one NFL team evaluates players.

General manager Rick Spielman said the Minnesota Vikings are doing more digging into social media “because of what happened to the Notre Dame linebacker.”

“We’ll be a little more heavily involved in social media,” Spielman said.

Spielman said his team is paying more attention to which players are on social media, what they’re saying and “how many times they tweet or twit.” He said it gives them insight to them as a person.

“It’s interesting to see the patterns on some of these players use social media,” Spielman said.

He noted that philosophy for the Vikings is to weigh both character and skill to see how they fit the Vikings’ scheme.

He noted that the Vikings will spend plenty of time with Te’o, who he referred to as an “extremely talented” football player.

Of note:

Spielman said three separate times the Vikings have “no intent” on trading wide receiver Percy Harvin. It should be noted that Spielman stressed the word “intent” each time he said it. Interestingly, Spielman talked glowingly about former West Virginia wide receiver Tavon Austin, a Harvin clone.

Spielman said the Vikings spent seven days leading up to the Combine putting their draft board together and coaches will evaluate players to see how they fit the scheme.