How will this affect tomorrow night?
Ahead of Sunday night’s game against the Indianapolis Colts at U.S. Bank Stadium, the Minnesota Vikings have made a move that we have been anticipating for some time even though we don’t know exactly what it means for the team.
The Vikings announced on Saturday that they have officially activated offensive lineman Dalton Risner from injured reserve. He started 11 games for the Vikings at left guard in 2023 and the team brought him back this past offseason in order to provide some depth. He was placed on injured reserve at the end of training camp and the team would have had to add him to the active roster by Monday to keep him from going back on IR.
In order to make room for him on the active roster, the team placed defensive lineman Taki Taimani on injured reserve. Taimani, an undrafted free agent out of Oregon, made the Vikings’ roster coming out of training camp and appeared in all seven games for the Vikings this season, checking in on about 15% of the defensive snaps.
The Vikings have also elevated defensive lineman Jalen Redmond to the active roster from the practice squad for Sunday’s game. Redmond also made the 53-man roster coming out of training camp but was waived and brought back to the practice squad in October. This will be his third elevation to the practice squad, so if the team wants to have him on the active roster again they’ll have to sign him to the roster.
Back to the offensive line, we don’t know yet what the Vikings are going to do on the front line against Indianapolis. We know that there will be a new starter at left tackle with Christian Darrisaw out for the season, but we don’t know whether it will be David Quessenberry or the newly acquired Cam Robinson, who has been working into the rotation during practice this week. Along those same lines, we don’t know if Risner being added to the active roster means that he’s going to be the starter at right guard or if the Vikings will stick with Ed Ingram, who has struggled mightily for much of the season.
These should be the final roster moves the Vikings make before kickoff on Sunday Night Football. If anything else does come down, we’ll have it for you as soon as we know about it.
