Jalen Redmond’s rise has been built on detours, and every one of them has mattered.
Before he ever took a snap for the Minnesota Vikings, Redmond was trying to recover from a high ankle sprain suffered in the UFL with the Arlington Renegades. In his fourth game there, a teammate rolled into him after missing a tackle, and the injury threatened to wreck his shot at making an NFL roster. He had signed with Arlington after the Carolina Panthers cut him as an undrafted free agent in 2023, then missed the final six games of the UFL season and had to get ready for NFL training camp.
“It was an ankle sprain,” Redmond recalled. “Friendly fire.”
“The craziest part about it is it healed before I got here,” he said. “So, it’s like, thank God.”
The timing turned out to be enormous. Redmond was able to show up healthy enough for camp, make the Vikings, and keep climbing from there.
He spent that first Minnesota season on the roster as a rookie, playing 13 games with two starts in 2024. Then came last year, when he earned 15 starts in Brian Flores’ defense even after Minnesota added Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen.
Flores said this week that Redmond kept getting better with every step.
“There’s a lot of calls, a lot of techniques, [and] a lot of fundamentals,” Flores acknowledged in training camp this year. “Red is a guy who took it all in and wasn’t perfect, but got steadily better and better. He had a great year last year.”
That growth is especially notable because Redmond’s football path has never been straightforward. He didn’t start playing until his junior year at Midwest City High School outside Oklahoma City.
He became a five-star recruit, but blood clot issues wiped out his freshman year at Oklahoma. Then COVID cost him his junior year.
Even the UFL path required serious mileage. Redmond explained that the league’s schedule can pile game after game onto a player’s body before NFL camp even begins.
“I [had UFL] camp in February, and then had to come here and do another camp in July and August,” explained Redmond. “So that was a long year for me.”
The offseason between Arlington and Minnesota was mostly about getting his ankle right back home in Oklahoma. Once he arrived in camp, though, he did enough to stick, and the Vikings have kept trusting him ever since.
That trust has only grown this season. Minnesota moved on from Hargrave, Allen, and Jonathan Greenard in the offseason, and Redmond has started all five games while grading out as one of the team’s better linemen. His pass rush can still improve, but PFF has him as the league’s best pass rusher with a 91 mark.
He has also become more than just a useful defender. Redmond has taken on a bigger voice in the room, helping fill the leadership gap left by those veteran departures. He’s only 27, but he’s already being leaned on by younger players on a defense that the Vikings have been replenishing through the draft.
“He’s really grown into a leadership role,” Flores said during training camp. “[He’s] somebody guys go to if they’re looking for answers, or advice, wisdom, or counsel.”
That part fits the rest of Redmond’s story. He’s the kind of player who looks like a long shot at first glance: undrafted, cut by Carolina, then sent through the UFL before getting his NFL chance.
But he’s also 6’2”, over 300 lbs., and built to stop the run. He learned Flores’ complex system quickly, and he’s now helping prepare Caleb Banks, Domonique Orange, and Jake Golday for meaningful snaps.
Redmond also carries the understated edge that seems to suit this defense. He didn’t use a trainer in his first NFL offseason because he wanted to save money, and he fits right in with a unit full of players who were overlooked in the draft, including Andrew Van Ginkel, Josh Metellus, and Levi Drake Rodriguez.
As for why Ryan Grigson recommended him, or what Flores saw on tape, Redmond isn’t pretending to have all the answers.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked what Flores saw in him. “At the end of the day, man, he knows.”
What the Vikings know now is pretty clear: Jalen Redmond may have entered the league the hard way, but he’s become exactly the kind of everyman superstar this defense keeps producing.
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