After the 2024 season ended with the offensive line being overwhelmed by Jared Verse and his Rams teammates for nine sacks, the Vikings decided to overhaul the all-important interior of their five-man wall. (In today\u2019s NFL, every position is as important as left tackle, because any weakness will be exploited.)<\/p>\n
The tackles aren\u2019t the problem, per se. They decided to keep Christian Darrisaw (who was lost to a torn ACL in second-quarter garbage time during the 2024 regular-season game against the Rams) and Brian O\u2019Neill. <\/p>\n
At center, former Vikings first-rounder Garrett Bradbury (who\u2019s doing well in New England) was jettisoned for former Colts first-rounder Ryan Kelly. Former Colts guard Will Fries came with Kelly, and former Ohio State standout Donovan Jackson was picked in the first round to play the other guard position.<\/p>\n
So that was the plan. Darrisaw and O\u2019Neill on the outside; Kelly, Fries, and Jackson on the inside.<\/p>\n
Then came the games that count. Darrisaw wasn\u2019t ready. Kelly suffered multiple concussions, before landing on injured reserve.<\/p>\n
During a Sunday morning interview during NFL Network\u2019s GameDay Morning, Vikings coach Kevin O\u2019Connell made a point that was both surprising and deflating: The Week 12 game at Green Bay will be the first time all year that the Vikings will have all five of them on the field at the same time.<\/p>\n
Will it matter? We\u2019ll find out at 1:00 p.m. ET. The up-and-down Vikings tend to do well when they\u2019re not expected to. And they\u2019re expected to lose to the Packers in Green Bay.<\/p>\n
It could be a close one. The Packers\u2019 offense has struggled at home lately, averaging 10 points per game in a pair of losses. If the intended five-man front can help the Vikings get something\/anything from their offense, maybe they\u2019ll be heading to Seattle at 5-6 and hoping to become a contender. <\/p>\n
The alternative is 4-7 and, as a practical matter, continuing their recent pattern of playoffs, no playoffs, playoffs, no playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the 2024 season ended with the offensive line being overwhelmed by Jared Verse and his Rams teammates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-309189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}