Head coach Kevin O'Connell provides positive updates on injured Minnesota Vikings
Injuries have been a plague on the Minnesota Vikings house over the last month. The cornerback position has been ravaged by injuries and forced the Vikings to bring in multiple bodies in the secondary. The other position that has seen more injuries is the tight end position. We know that T.J. Hockenson is still some […]
Injuries have been a plague on the Minnesota Vikings house over the last month. The cornerback position has been ravaged by injuries and forced the Vikings to bring in multiple bodies in the secondary.
The other position that has seen more injuries is the tight end position. We know that T.J. Hockenson is still some time away from returning, but head coach Kevin O'Connell is optimistic about his timetable.
"Every time I see him working on the side field, it becomes awfully tempting to corner Tyler Williams somewhere in the building and demand answers on when we'll be able to start implementing him maybe off the PUP and get him a little bit of work, whether it's just simply individual, some routes on air, start getting him some timing with our quarterbacks. But where he's at, albeit very well ahead of maybe where some of the medical folks thought he would be, there is an injury there that a timeline exists and we're going to try to stay true to that while also giving him opportunities to push to maybe shrink that timeline a little bit."
O'Connell saying that Hockenson is "very well ahead" of a standard injury timeline is a big deal. He had surgery to repair his torn ACL on January 26th which would make nine months around Halloween. If the Vikings could get Hockenson back sooner, that could be a big win for the 2024 season.
The other injury at tight end is with Robert Tonyan. He was carted off on Wednesday afternoon and was down for a significant period of time. Luckily, the injury wasn't major and he may even be back for the first preseason game.
"He (Tonyan) was carted off, it was a back spasm type issue. He's going to be working through a lower back thing. We hope to get him back soon. He'll be out today, and we'll see how that goes here in the next few days, how he turns over. But we want to get him, especially with the preseason games, in the not-too-distant future, to a good place so he can take part in those."
Overall, the Vikings could use some better luck with injuries, but these are looking better than initially thought.
