Caleb Banks enters his rookie season with plenty of baggage and, strangely enough, a real lane to the 2026 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Award.
That sounds backward on its face. He was underwhelming in the preseason.
He has already admitted to conditioning problems just weeks before the season. He is not projected to start.
And still, the Minnesota Vikings’ first-round pick has a path that could get interesting fast if everything starts to click.
The Vikings selected Banks 18th overall in the NFL Draft, passing on the analysts’ big boards and the push from fans for now-Bears safety Dillon Thieneman. Minnesota bet on a rare body: 6-foot-7, 327 pounds, with the wingspan of a bald eagle.
But the bet came with obvious risk. Banks played only three games in his final college season, then hurt his foot at the NFL Scouting Combine, leaving his immediate future looking uncertain.
Minnesota still made him the guy.
The early returns have been uneven. Some of that can be traced to the time he spent rehabbing the foot injury, which explains the conditioning lag.
But the same problems that pushed him down draft boards have shown up again this preseason. His size helps and hurts him.
Pad-level issues and getting moved off his spot have continued to be part of the story.
Even so, Banks has put himself on a workable track. He has said he wants to clean those issues up, and there is a realistic scenario where he climbs into the starting lineup sooner rather than later. That, in turn, could open the door to a run at DROY.
He also does not need to bulldoze a locked-in depth chart to get there. Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins and Levi Drake Rodriguez, two recent late-round picks, are the names in front of him, but neither has seized the job for good. They have combined for just 26 tackles and three career sacks, and while both have looked solid this offseason, they are not established as starters.
Once Banks gets back into game shape, the Vikings could find a way to work him into meaningful snaps early in the season.
The award race brings its own problem, though: defensive tackles almost never win it. In the past three decades, only three interior linemen have taken home the honor - Aaron Donald in 2014, Sheldon Richardson in 2013 and Ndamukong Suh in 2010. Donald was the last one to do it, and he got there with nine sacks from the interior.
Banks is not built like a pure sack artist anyway. In college, he never had more than 4.5 sacks in a season.
He is more of a disruptor, and that means he may not lead the rookie class in sacks the way pass rushers such as David Bailey or Rueben Bain Jr. might. But he can wreck a game in other ways.
His measurables are part of the appeal. Banks posted an 85-inch wingspan at the combine, the longest recorded there in the past 30 years, and his 9.84 Relative Athletic Score is the 34th best ever for a defensive tackle, according to MathBomb.
That kind of physical profile is exactly why the Vikings are willing to wait through the rough edges. He has traits that can’t be taught, and Brian Flores is the kind of defensive mind who can work with that raw material.
There may still be a slow start once the season begins. The bust talk is already out there. But if Banks keeps improving week by week, his foundation is the sort that can turn into something fast.
And if he can put together something like five or six sacks, a dozen tackles for loss and maybe even an interception or two, that might be enough to shock the league and take the award.
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