Friday Mailbag: Camp is almost here

Vikings training camp is set to begin and Vikings fans have a lot of questions

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Friday everyone! Quick update if you didn’t see it: Jordan Addison took a plea deal, so we should have resolution on his DUI case from the NFL on a suspension soon.

Anyway, let’s dive into your questions….

Matt D… what do you think we see more of from the defense this year: 3 Safeties or 3 OLB with Turner, Greenard, and Gink?

I was thinking about this the other day: The defense has really, really changed this offseason when it comes to the options that Brian Flores is going to have. There are so many things that I can see working. My first guess would be that we will see more of Metellus-Johnson-Smith than we are going to see Turner-Greenard-Gink but I could also see them wanting to use Byron Murphy Jr., Mekhi Blackmon and Isaiah Rodgers on the field at the same time.

I guess my copout answer would be that it’s going to be situational. When the opponent is using 3WR, they might go with more nickel packages than in the past and have Metellus play traditional free safety next to Harry. In pass situations, maybe move either Turner or AVG inside as a rusher. In spots where the other team is using bigger personnel, Metellus down in a “big nickel” type of spot and have Turner rotate to keep Greenard and AVG fresh.

It’s a defense that might have a few more question marks than last year but it’s also more dynamic than it has been in the last two years.

Eldon… Which camp storyline do you think will be overblown this year?

The obvious pick here would be the worries about the secondary. There’s a very good chance that we’re walking out of August feeling like Rodgers, Blackmon and Murphy Jr. is a pretty good group of cornerbacks and that Theo Jackson is the next Cam Bynum/Anthony Harris type. I’m leaning a little bit toward the opinion that the secondary getting so much attention has a lot to do with the fact that every other position is set with proven starters.

We might also overblow Sam Howell’s preseason performances because that always happens with backup QBs.

Jason… What is your biggest camp surprise from covering the Vikings?

The biggest surprise player was Dan Chisena. The guy was a lacrosse player who had caught like four passes during his entire football career at Penn State and then he ended up making the team. That was shocking. I should also mention Chad Beebe. That guy could play. If he had stayed healthy, he would have carved out a nice little Jarius Wright type of career for himself.

I remember Ivan Pace Jr. suddenly starting to get first-team reps during the 2023 night practice and then never giving them up. That was unexpected when you consider how few UDFAs even make roster spots, much less win starting jobs and beat out fairly high draft picks. Josh Metellus suddenly becoming a star kinda came out of nowhere.

I know this isn’t exactly a “camp surprise” but when they decided to cut Brian Robison and Terence Newman after 2018, I was in disbelief. Getting rid of two key players from 2017, especially guys who had been great depth and veteran leadership, didn’t make much sense. And then only a few weeks later they ended up without Everson Griffen and didn’t have much depth to deal with that.

@IdiocyIi Probability Darrisaw starts Week1? Or that he’ll begin season on PUP?

When it comes to injury recoveries, it’s just so hard to take a guess. I’d have to say 50-50 because we don’t really know. The fact that he was back at minicamp was a really good sign and he was moving around pretty well. But it takes a long time to get the body back up to full, 100% football speed. We will have a much better sense of whether he can play Week 1 when we see whether he’s taking full-speed reps or not early in camp. If he’s out there right away, odds are good. If he doesn’t get into 11-on-11s until the end of camp, then it is unlikely that he plays Week 1.

Gary A… What are we to make of Cleveland and Houston signing their second round draft picks to fully guaranteed four year contracts? Now the rest of the 2nd round class haven't signed contracts presumably holding out for guarantees The Houston and Cleveland picks were the first two of the second round, but is this a start of a trend?

It looks like it’s the start of a trend, yes. It seems that the second-rounders have decided to collectively fight for their guarantees. At the end of the day, it doesn’t hurt the team too much to bend because most second-round picks are going to be there four years even if they aren’t great. But with the rookie wage scale, there isn’t a ton of ground for the players to stand on. It’ll get figured out.

Hey, what a life hack by Kwesi: If you don’t have any second-round picks, they can never hold out on you! I kid, I kid.

Ben… I don’t trust KOC to hit that run button consistently when the Vikings are up late in games. Talk me into that changing this season??

Well, all I can say is that you have to trust the run game in order to lean into it. I definitely thought there were times last year where they were running effectively and didn’t stick with it (or that they were ahead by enough that running ineffectively would still be fine) but they have wildly different personnel this year. It’s not like you could expect a Brandel/Bradbury/Risner O-line to truly impose its will the way we could see Jackson/Kelly/Fries. And they didn’t have a Jordan Mason style BeastMode runner either.

It is pretty crazy though. Aaron Jones had 130 runs in the second half and 124 in the first half in 2024. Considering how often they were leading in the second half, you would have expected way more. KOC is always going to trust his QBs to a fault and he’s always going to want to play aggressively with the passing game to put teams away but if they prove that ground-and-pound can win, I don’t think he’ll ignore it.

Arin J…. Hi Matthew…WR depth, Safety/CB depth will be fascinating when training camp opens, do you have a an older story training camp related maybe 16, 17 18 udfa darling, or unsung hero etc?

I’m with you on those two positions. What both of those have in common is an intriguing former high draft pick. Rondale Moore and Jeff Okudah both made my list as most interesting players at camp because the reclamation project storyline is always a good one to follow.

The story that I still think is the funniest is the Kyle Sloter arc. A lot of people became convinced that he was the next great QB based on him having a handful of entertaining fourth quarters in the preseason. It reached a point where there was so much noise about him that Mike Zimmer walked up to the podium and told us that Sloter couldn’t even get the team lined up right in preseason and demanded that we relax on the praise. Imagine a coach telling the media to NOT praise someone. And then there were the Sloter tweets, Sloter’s dad’s tweets and emails to everyone on the beat, as if we had anything to do with Zimmer’s opinion.

There was also a random cornerback from UCF (can’t recall his name) who got really mad at Dane Mizutani for not mentioning him in a report about the cornerback position. The guy wrote the email in a hilariously dramatic way though. Something like: “The next great cornerback in Minnesota has a name and that’s…” whatever it was. I’d look the guy up but it makes for a better story that I can’t even remember his name because he didn’t even land a practice squad position.

One time, this fourth-string tight end from Marian University caught a pass and Kirk Cousins yelled, “THE MARIAN FLASH” right at us on the sideline. We were like… uhhhkay? And then he said it again, as if to emphasize that we needed to know The Marian Flash. I heard later that Spielman was not happy with Kirk for pointing the kid out because he didn’t want any of us to write about him and have another team poach him from the practice squad. The guy did play in a few games. I suppose he even “flashed.”

I also enjoyed when Bucky Hodges did a press conference talking about carrying on the legacy of No. 84. Of course, he never played an actual down in that jersey.

Ramsey K… Given that Ryan Kelly has missed quite a few games the past few years, are you worried about the backup C position? Jurgens played terribly last preseason, though granted that was his rookie year. I think With Skule, Brandel, and Rouse we're fine at OL depth other than C...what do you expect the Vikings to do there?

Bonus question - what do you think is the biggest lesson the Vikings can learn from the teams that performed better than them last year? Obviously everyone is copying the Eagles' plan for the trenches, but is there something from Washington, Baltimore, Buffalo, etc. that they can learn outside of having a great/mobile QB?

Jurgens did grade badly in pass protection during the preseason but I would caution against using those numbers to evaluate him. In practice he took the No. 2 center job from a veteran Dan Feeney and then he was active on gameday, meaning they trusted him enough to be in there. That’s not to say he has proven anything, just that there’s some evidence that they like him. If it goes badly in camp for him this year, we could see someone else get signed but backup centers… man… there aren’t 20 good starting centers in the league.

To your bonus question, I think they showed that they learned a lot of the lessons. Having a nasty interior D-line is a cheat code, so they went an spent the dollars there. Having a good interior O-line is a cheat code, so they went and spent the dollars there. They needed an imposing runner in the mold of a Derrick Henry, so they went and got the nastiest guy they could find in Jordan Mason. Zone coverage is king these days, so they paid their top zone corner and signed another one.

Nobody knows how it’s all going to come together but you can say without any doubt that the front office read the room this offseason.

Jeff… As we look at the upcoming schedule with extreme trepidation, it is worth pointing out that before last season it was the consensus that we had a very tough schedule. Several respected analytic prognostications reported we had the 5th toughest schedule, one reassessing in early October moving us to the 3rd most difficult schedule. The reason is that the North was as-advertised and due to the AFC South record in 2023, it was also considered very tough. All this is to say that things change - our schedule may very well turn out to be brutal, but there's just as good a chance it turns out to be mediocre.

Yeah, I did an article about this a few weeks ago. I looked at NFL.com’s toughest schedule list and then the analytics from two different outlets projecting the toughest schedules two different ways and none of them turned out to actually be predictive of the SOS at the end of the season. Some of the tough schedules turned out to be difficult but think about how much changed in one year. A lotta folks were thinking Tennessee had improved and the Jaguars would be good and Houston would be a Super Bowl team and none of that happened. We would have expected the 49ers to be brutal and the game at Lambeau to be a nightmare but both teams were banged up and underwhelming. How about the Jets? Everyone had them as a tough team in 2024 and they fired their coach after the Vikings game.

I will say that just because it’s unpredictable doesn’t mean it won’t be tough. There are some monster QBs and teams on this schedule. But the other part of not fearing the schedule is that the Vikings roster should be able to match up with anybody in the NFL on a given Sunday. That’s why they moved on from Darnold: So they could run out a 53-man roster as strong as anybody in the NFL.

@AvgVikesFan Who contributes more this year? TJ Hockenson or Jordan Addison?