Sports
Vikings Territory: Vikings Down To One Realistic Option For Free Agent DE
Weatherly was the team's free-agent EDGE acquisition.
August 3, 2021
Approximately 45 EDGE rushers signed with various teams during free agency this offseason.
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Weatherly was the team’s free-agent EDGE acquisition. In fact, he was the first free agent that Minnesota signed amid its defensive bonanza in the spring. The Carolina Panthers hosted Weatherly for one season, allowing him to head back home to the Vikings after nine games of service.
The Vikings will take all of the innovation and quarterback pressure they can find. The pandemic season was so rotten that Minnesota finished dead last in the NFL for defensive pass rush per Pro Football Focus. Zimmer’s defenses ordinarily hang their hats on a vicious pass rush, making this last-in-the-business malarkey a true outlier.
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Should Spielman desire one other pass-rushing option, one familiar man is available. And he could start immediately — Everson Griffen.
Griffen, on the other hand, would be forced to mend fences with Minnesota’s front office and players. Earlier in 2021, Griffen tweeted-then-deleted whimsical and insulting statements about quarterback Kirk Cousins and the team as a whole. Then, he expressed a longing to return to the Vikings. It was a strange ordeal. Needless to say, his tweeting routine ceased after the controversy.
Griffen registered six sacks in 2020 during stints with the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions — while playing about 25% of all defensive snaps. When those Vikings foes gave the man playing time, he delivered. On Minnesota’s all-time sack list, Griffen ranks seventh (74.5 sacks), trailing Jared Allen (84.5 sacks) by 10 sacks. During his last season in purple, he tallied 35 pressures per ProFootballReference.com — which ranked 14th in the NFL for the 2019 season. It was the season that the Vikings upended the New Orleans Saints in the postseason. Hunter had 36 quarterback pressures; Griffen was one off Hunter’s total.
The other option for Minnesota is to stay organic with the current group and hope that Hunter-Pierce-Tomlinson-Richardson generates enough attention to free up Weatherly-Wonnum-Jones for some menace.
This press release was produced by Vikings Territory. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
