The Vikings only received one player off the waiver wire, former San Francisco tight end Blake Bell. Bell was coached by current Vikings OL coach Tony Sparano during his rookie year. The team freed up a roster spot for him by waiving/injured tight end Bucky Hodges.

Among the Vikings’ waivered players, offensive lineman Zac Kerin was claimed by the Detroit Lions, linebacker Edmond Robinson was claimed by the New York Jets, and (showing just how desperate teams are for offensive linemen) former starting tackle T.J. Clemmings was picked up by the Washington Redskins. Both Kerin and Robinson had standing invitations to the Vikings’ practice squad if they cleared waivers (Clemmings almost certainly did not).

The following players have been added to the practice squad:

• LB Elijah Lee (drafted by the Vikings in the seventh round, initially claimed he didn’t want to join Minnesota’s PS and hoped to be picked up by another team instead)
• QB Kyle Sloter (Played the preseason in Denver, going 31 of 43 for 413 yards with 3 TDs and 0 INTs … with Taylor Heinicke going to IR, the team definitely needed another quarterback for the scout team. The Vikings are paying him serious money for a PS player: $340,000 … NFL minimum for a rookie on the 53-man roster is $465,000.)
• RB Bronson Hill (free agent who spent time with the Bengals and Jaguars in 2016)
• DT Ifeadi Odenigbo (drafted by the Vikings in the seventh round of the 2017 draft)
• CB Horace Richardson (undrafted free agent, spent the preseason with the Vikings)
• DT Dylan Bradley (undrafted free agent, spent the preseason with the Vikings)
• TE Kyle Carter (spent time on the Vikings PS in 2016, undrafted in 2016)
• WR Cayleb Jones (free agent who was on the Eagles PS in 2016, then signed to the Vikings PS in December)

Two spots on the practice squad remained open, as of Sunday night.

Update: The Vikings signed two players to fill the remaining spots on the practice squad on Monday:

• C Cornelius Edison (was on Chicago’s roster and appeared in six games and spent the preseason with Atlanta)
• OT Cedrick Lang (spent the preseason with Denver)

I put the quotes around the word “final” in the headline because every team in the league will be sifting through the nearly 2,000 players who were waived in the last 48 hours and a few may end up bumping someone off the roster as a result. Those veteran players who were released are eligible to sign with any team, but players with less than four years of NFL experience are subject to waiver claims, which are allocated based on the previous season’s finishing order. The team with the worst 2016 record has top priority for waiver claims and the current Super Bowl champs have lowest priority. So, for example, Cleveland could claim up to 53 players off the waiver wire, and would be awarded with every one of them. The Vikings are near the middle of the pack for waiver priority. At noon Eastern time on Sunday, teams are informed if their waiver claims have been granted and after 1:00pm, all teams can begin signing eligible players to their 10-man practice squads.

Most of the players who didn’t make the 53-man roster were not expected to, but one player not only was expected to, he was a starter: offensive guard Alex Boone was released only one year into his four-year contract. Boone had not been playing as well as hoped, but few people expected him to be cut. His release means the team takes a $3.4 million hit (the guaranteed portion of his salary), but also frees up another $3.3 million under the salary cap. Arif Hasan found the cut “baffling“.

Until the waiver wire results are announced, here is the Vikings roster for 2017:

(more…)

At the Star Tribune, Jim Souhan explains why the recent rash of injuries at Vikings training camp is causing incidents of deja vu for both coaching staff and fans:

Reiff has missed much of the beginning of training camp with a back injury. Vikings coach Mike Zimmer says it’s not serious, but it already is.

The 2016 Vikings should have won 10 or 11 games even without Teddy Bridgewater and Adrian Peterson. An offensive line that collapsed like a Teflon dome in a snowstorm reduced the victory total to eight.

Reiff became the Vikings’ most important free agent signing. He immediately became the starting left tackle, a position that turned into a wind tunnel last year.

Reiff is a former first-round draft pick. When you take a left tackle in the first round, you hope he’ll hold the position for a decade or more. He lasted five years in Detroit. Then the Lions let him leave.

For all of the hopes attached to him, he’s a lot like the player he’s replacing. Matt Kalil was a first-round pick in 2012 who lasted five years before leaving in free agency. For all of the angst caused by Kalil’s regression, the Viking at this point would settle for a Kalil-like performance at left tackle. Anything but a windsock would be an improvement.

So the Vikings’ last stay in Mankato is not going as Zimmer would have hoped.

Reiff is hurt. Even if he returns soon, he will have missed valuable time learning the offense.

Free-agent running back Latavius Murray hasn’t practiced. Wide receiver Laquon Treadwell is recovering from an injury he says wasn’t caused by a scuffle with Antone Exum. Given the NFL’s history of injury disclosure what we can take from that is that he was definitely injured in a scuffle with Exum.

Reiff, Murray and Treadwell were supposed to be three reasons for optimism. Like the offensive line last year, they have become problems.

In the Star Tribune, Jim Souhan reminds us all that up to the bye week, last year’s version of the Minnesota Vikings looked like a potential Super Bowl contender, until the wheels all came off at once:

As of Oct. 23, they had beaten three teams that would make the NFL playoffs, and another that had won the conference championship the year before. They had won twice on the road and had opened U.S. Bank Stadium with a thrilling victory over They Who Shall Not Be Named.

Only a missed 23-yard field goal had kept them from advancing in the playoffs the previous season. They had the look of a budding power.

Then they collapsed, losing eight of their last 11 games, playing like invertebrates in a home loss to the Colts in December and eliciting predictable responses from fans who believe that early-season success is more tease than prelude.

So are the 2017 Vikings charged with banishing all memories of 2016, or with reviving the feeling the team had in mid-October? Was 5-0 a mirage?

For all of the latent pessimism surrounding the franchise, the makeup of the current roster and the nature of the NFL indicates that the 2016 team simply was destroyed by injuries. Even without a healthy offensive line, star running back and starting quarterback, the Vikings were in position to make the playoffs. Two excruciating losses to Detroit made the difference between 10-6 and 8-8.

The Vikings built a quality roster that was waylaid by an offensive line that couldn’t create a running game or give Sam Bradford enough time to look downfield.

The defense, tasked with carrying the team, wore down over the final 11 weeks. A competent offense would have prevented that from happening.

[…]

Zimmer’s first team went 7-9, and his second finished 11-5. With decent luck and health, there is little reason to doubt that this team should win 10 or 11 games and return to the playoffs.

With no worse than an NFL-average distribution of injuries, the Vikings roster is certainly capable of a 10-6 season and a wild card berth. Now that Adrian Peterson has moved on, the team no longer has to cripple game plans to ensure that AP got his touches, and the running backs are all starting-quality players even if no one of them is a drop-in replacement for Peterson (who was, beyond question, one of the greatest running threats in NFL history, but a liability in blocking and barely acceptable catching passes). Latavius Murray, Dalvin Cook, and Jerick McKinnon will be a better-balanced offensive threat as a group than Peterson was by himself … that can only help the team in the long run.