Vikings HC Kevin O'Connell gives intriguing updates on status of T.J. Hockenson, Dalton Risner and more
The Minnesota Vikings have a game on Thursday night against the Los Angeles Rams so the injury reports are a little bit different. Instead of traditional ones, they will be estimations. The first one came out on Monday and it had some heavy hitters on it. It's not going to be the end of the […]
The Minnesota Vikings have a game on Thursday night against the Los Angeles Rams so the injury reports are a little bit different. Instead of traditional ones, they will be estimations. The first one came out on Monday and it had some heavy hitters on it.
It's not going to be the end of the world for players to not practice much this week, especially since it's a four-day break from their grueling game against the Detroit Lions. However, head coach Kevin O'Connell did some updates on multiple players via his press conference on Monday.
T.J. Hockenson and Dalton Risner
"It's early. We'll make that determination kind of as these next couple of days. As we put together game plans, we want to have a good feel for that. But very much a possibility."
Blake Cashman
"He’s progressing, coming along from that toe in a way where I don't know if he'll be available or not yet, as far as the estimations on his workload via the fact that we're taking the tempo down on practices and the workload as we prep for Thursday. If we can have him, great. If not, I do feel very positive about the Colts game, for sure. But I'm not in a place yet to rule him out quite yet."
Dallas Turner playing just four snaps
"He’s working through it. I mean he's a young player in a defense where the roles and responsibilities sometimes in game can adjust based upon what we're seeing. I think we've got a really deep outside linebacker room with Gink [Andrew Van Ginkel] and [Jonathan] Greenard, Pat Jones, and then Haddy [Jihad Ward] got his role. We’re going to continue to see Dallas have an impact, it may be a growing thing as we go here, but trust me, I've got a ton of confidence in Dallas, and he's growing within a pretty high, high-level IQ defense. I think he's an incredible fit in our defense, not only in the present, but in the future as well. He’s going to be an absolute monster for us. But sometimes the way the game flow goes, there might be, what personnel are they using and how do we want to match that personnel, things like that. Then the adjustments we make in game, sometimes to activate Andrew Van Ginkel and his high, high IQ and allow him to kind of have the hard down and allow other players to play fast. We do that with [Josh] Metellus. We do it with Harry [Harrison Smith]. We do it with some of our guys and total trust and confidence and Flo [Brian Flores] and how we're using our guys. I think there was a stretch there where we lost them momentum a little bit and then we made some adjustments and put together a nice drive offensively to start the second half. We kept that thing close all the way down to the very end, would have loved to be able to finish that thing out without having our defense go back on the field but, just in general I think DT [Dallas Turner] is growing every single day and I'm more excited about him now than I was. Even when we drafted him and everybody, it's been well-documented my response to when we drafted him."
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