The Raiders’ quarterback competition will reach a checkpoint this week when Las Vegas takes on Minnesota to open preseason play.
On Monday, head coach Antonio Pierce told reporters in his press conference that he hasn’t decided who will take the first snap. But both Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew are set to receive plenty of time behind center on Saturday.
“We’ve still got two more true training camp practices, then we’ve got Wednesday, Thursday — that’s when we’ll start looking at what we want to do game-wise. But both quarterbacks are going to play a legit quarter,” Pierce said. “Who goes out first, who goes out second really doesn’t matter. They’ll get, hopefully, an equal amount of snaps and opportunities to showcase.”
Pierce noted that neither quarterback has really separated himself from the other at this point.
“I don’t think we [can] sit there and say somebody’s won yet,” Pierce said. “I think they’ve both had good moments. I got back, I think Gardner’s had several days now where he’s made some plays. But there’s also turnovers that show up that we don’t want to have happen as well. And when I look at Aidan, I see a guy that’s throwing the ball accurate, I see some drops by wide receivers. And I don’t think it’s just on the quarterbacks, I think overall our offensive play has to pick up. Sense of urgency — wide receivers, O-line, just all those guys.
“I go back to the very beginning in my opening statement of training camp, they’re going against a very good defense. And I think they’re feeling that and I think it’s good for our team, the competition part. But, obviously, somebody, again, has to step up. And we’re getting closer and closer. And obviously we’re getting into game-week mode a little bit as we get later in the week.”
Last month, Vikings receiver Jordan Addison was arrested after police found him asleep at the wheel near LAX. He has now been charged with two misdemeanors.
Via Ben Goessling of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Addison was charged last Wednesday with two misdemeanors.
Addison is accused of driving under the influence of alcohol and driving with blood-alcohol content in excess of the legal limit of .08 percent.
He’s due in court for an arraignment on October 7.
Under the NFL’s substance-abuse policy, Addison faces a suspension of three games. The number can be increased by aggravating circumstances such as: felonious conduct, extreme intoxication of 0.15 percent BAC or higher, property damage or serious injury or death to the player or a third party, and/or if the player has had prior drug- or alcohol-related misconduct.
Nothing in the policy calls for enhanced penalties due to prior speeding incidents unrelated to DUI. That’s important for Addison, because last year he was cited for driving 140 miles per hour.
When the Vikings put tight end T.J. Hockenson on the physically unable to perform list at the start of training camp, head coach Kevin O’Connell said that Hockenson was ahead of schedule in his rehab from a torn ACL.
Being ahead of schedule isn’t the same thing as being on the verge of returning to action, however. That was the central theme of O’Connell’s update on Hockenson’s condition on Friday.
O’Connell said that there is a timeline in place for Hockenson and that the team will “try to stay true to that while also giving him opportunities to push to maybe shrink that timeline a little bit.” For now, though, it’s premature to talk about when Hockenson might get the green light.
“I just don’t think it would be responsible at this point with where he’s at in his rehab to start even me personally thinking about are we going to have him, are we not?” O’Connell said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com. “I want him focusing on what he can control, what he’s done an unbelievable job of so far, which is his daily mission of just attacking this thing one day at a time.”
Hockenson can be activated at any point in camp, but will have to miss four games if he’s not taken off the PUP list before the cut to 53 players.
Justin Jefferson missed seven games last season with a torn right hamstring. The Vikings have been deliberate about his work in training camp this summer.
He had a day off Wednesday followed by a team off day Thursday before practicing Friday.
“I’m so scared for it to happen again that I’ve been overly cautious about it, just trying to take care of my body in the right way, just trying to find new things that I can implement in my day-to-day life that can better help me throughout the season,” Jefferson said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN. “I’ve definitely been working on my hamstrings a little bit more, making sure that I’m injury-proof.”
In his first three seasons, Jefferson rarely took a rep off in training camp or practice, missed only one game and played more than 80 percent of the snaps each of those seasons.
Jefferson said he learned a lot about his body last season, and now he and the Vikings are working hard to prevent a re-injury of the soft tissue. Vice president of player health and performance Tyler Williams put together a plan for Jefferson for this summer.
Jefferson is thinking about his hamstring now, but he doesn’t expect that to last long.
“I’ll get to the point where I feel like I’m not going to think of it again,” he said, “just because I feel like I’m going to push it to where it’s way strong enough for it not to happen again. It’s all about having the confidence in it and I can go out there and play freely.”
The Vikings have been practicing without T.J. Hockenson at training camp and another tight end is now dealing with an injury as well.
Robert Tonyan left Thursday’s practice on a cart and head coach Kevin O’Connell provided an update on his condition on Friday.
“I know he was carted off,” O’Connell said. “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, we’ll see how that goes in the next few days, how he kind of turns over. We want to give him — Especially with the preseason games in the not too distant future, we want to make sure we get him to a good place so he can take part in those.”
Tonyan signed with the Vikings this offseason. He had 11 catches for 112 yards while playing every game for the Bears last season.
Josh Oliver, Johnny Mundt, Nick Muse, Sammis Reyes, Trey Knox, and N’Keal Harry are also vying for tight end roles in Minnesota.
The Vikings have opened camp with Sam Darnold getting the majority of the first-team reps at quarterback, but head coach Kevin O’Connell suggested that won’t always be the case on Tuesday.
First-round pick J.J. McCarthy has generally been working with the second team and O’Connell said that the rookie is “seeing some of the things that will allow him to start phasing into getting into the huddle.”
“You will see at some point see J.J. be consistently maybe getting more one reps there,” O’Connell said at a press conference. “At the same time, I think Sam earned the right to take the bulk of those reps early on.”
O’Connell also gave an overall assessment of how both quarterbacks have looked to this point in camp.
“Both guys have done a lot of really, really good things and some more notable — visually — than others,” O’Connell said. “I also think both guys have made some mistakes with the football – learning mistakes — where they’re trying to either see if they can squeeze a ball in over the middle before a safety can step in front or maybe not taking a chance down the field in a 1-on-1 where maybe that’s our best option.”
The Vikings play their first preseason game on August 10 and O’Connell has not outlined how the quarterback work will be divvied up, but he said Tuesday that there’s a “clear-cut plan” in place.
The Vikings are set to add some experience to their cornerback corps.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that they are going to sign Fabian Moreau to their 90-man roster.
Moreau recorded 46 tackles, an interception, and seven passes defensed in 11 games for the Broncos last season. He opened his career with four years in Washington and spent a year each with the Falcons and Giants before moving to Denver. He has 298 tackles, seven interceptions, three forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery for his career.
The Vikings lost Mekhi Blackmon for the season to a torn ACL in an early training camp practice, so Moreau will be part of the plan to flesh out the group in his absence.
A recent item from Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com regarding Minnesota’s quest for a franchise quarterback made it clear that they preferred to draft a quarterback in round one but to keep Kirk Cousins as the starter, for 2024 or longer.
That wasn’t the message that was communicated to Cousins.
Appearing on the latest episode of the Scoop City podcast, Cousins said that, at the time he was deciding on his future, the Vikings weren’t planning to draft a new quarterback.
“I don’t think they were ready to go there yet in March,” Cousins said, via quotes distributed by TheAthletic.com. “I think the reality is just that they wanted to give themselves that flexibility. And I remember [coach] Kevin [O’Connell]'s words, which I’m not going to hold them to, were, ‘Hey, if we sign you back, I would think it’s very unlikely that we would draft somebody.’ It was something to that effect. But I also know in the league things change.”
He knows things change from what happened after he signed with the Falcons. Presumably, they told him something similar about not using the eighth overall pick on a player who wouldn’t help the team win this year.
Still, Cousins got more security in Atlanta than he would have gotten in Minnesota. His new contract carries $90 million guaranteed through the first two years, with another $10 million in 2026 that will become fully guaranteed in March 2025.
“I just felt it had been — and was going to be — basically one year, one year, one year,” Cousins said regarding his situation in Minnesota. “I felt like, ‘Yeah, maybe I do want to play in Minnesota another five or six years, but it’s going to be on one-year contracts.’ That’s the plan they’ve chosen that they wanted to walk. I thought, ‘OK, I don’t really want to do that. I’ll do it if it’s my only option.’”
Whether he stays in Atlanta more than one year remains to be seen. Two seems to be the outer limit, unless they plan on sitting 24-year-old Michael Penix Jr. for three seasons.
As mentioned earlier today, the final decision as to when Penix takes over could be made, or at least heavily influenced, by owner Arthur Blank.
Regardless, Cousins will make $62.5 million this year, and he’s guaranteed to add $27.5 million next year. It seems clear that, even though Minnesota and Atlanta both opted for top-10 quarterbacks in the draft, Cousins was never going to get a deal like that one from the Vikings.
In recent days, we’ve tried to shift some of the focus regarding quarterback contracts from APY (and only APY) to cash flow. As to the four-year window from 2023 through 2026 and 2024 through 2027, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is the cash-flow king.
As to the four-year period that ended in 2023, the winner was Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott.
Per a source with knowledge of the numbers, Prescott earned $157.4 from 2020 through 2023. Deshaun Watson made $131.2 million. Kirk Cousins and Matthew Stafford each earned $130.5 million. Mahomes got $122.4 million.
Prescott’s high cash-flow number happened despite that fact that his contract has an APY of $40 million — $15 million below the top of the market.
Prescott doesn’t appear on either of the lists moving forward because his contract expires in 2024. Whenever he signs a new one (and he will, with the Cowboys or someone else), he’ll surely spring back up the list.
After cornerback Mekhi Blackmon suffered a torn ACL last week, the Vikings have added a veteran to their secondary.
According to multiple reports, Minnesota is signing Bobby McCain.
McCain, 30, formerly played under Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores when they were both with the Dolphins.
McCain spent most of last season with the Giants. He appeared in 10 games, mostly playing special teams. He was on the field for just 19 defensive snaps.
After spending six seasons with the Dolphins to begin his career, McCain played for Washington in 2021 and 2022, appearing in all 34 regular season games.
In 131 games with 87 starts, McCain has recorded 45 passes defensed with 11 interceptions.
As a corresponding move, Alec Lewis of TheAthletic.com reports the Vikings have cut kicker John Parker Romo. That leaves them with rookie Will Reichard as the lone kicker on the roster.