Dillon Bell may not have gotten a real look last week, but the Vikings are running out of reasons to keep him buried on the depth chart.
Minnesota promoted Bell to the 53-man roster ahead of the Week 2 game against the Chicago Bears after Jauan Jennings missed the contest for personal reasons that were not injury-related. The move created an opening, but Bell barely had a chance to do anything with it. He played no offensive snaps against Chicago and logged three special teams snaps without recording a statistic.
That’s why Sunday’s matchup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers feels like the obvious next chance. A player can be elevated from the practice squad to the 53-man roster three times before the team has to sign him to the active roster to keep making him available on game day, and one of those opportunities should come in Week 3.
Bell gave Minnesota something to think about in the preseason. Across three games, he caught seven passes for 59 yards and added two carries for 27 yards, finishing with 86 yards from scrimmage. At six-foot and 209 pounds, he showed enough to keep himself in the conversation, even after the Vikings initially placed him on the practice squad, released him, and then brought him back.
There’s still uncertainty about whether that preseason production will carry over for the undrafted rookie out of Georgia. But after last week passed without a meaningful opportunity, the case for giving him another shot is easy to make.
The bigger issue is that Minnesota needs help at wide receiver, and badly. Outside of Justin Jefferson, the group has offered very little.
Jordan Addison has only two catches for 21 yards through the first two games. Jennings, Myles Price, and Tai Felton have not caught a pass this season.
That leaves the Vikings searching for a spark in a passing game that has been flat through two weeks. Minnesota is averaging 147 yards per game through the air, a figure that sits 14.5 yards per game ahead of the second-worst passing offense in the league, the Tennessee Titans.
With the offense sputtering and Jefferson carrying too much of the load, there’s no real downside to seeing whether Bell can provide something different. Even if he’s elevated and doesn’t make an impact against Tampa Bay, the Vikings still have one more chance to use him before they’d need to sign him to the active roster to make him available again.
In Other News...
Vikings Take A Late Defensive Hit Before Huge Bucs Matchup
The Vikings head into their Week 3 trip to Tampa Bay with the offensive side in decent shape, as quarterback Kyler Murray and running back Aaron Jones are both available for the matchup with the Buccaneers. Minnesota also made a change at punter, with Brett Thorson still sidelined by a hamstring injury and Johnny Hekker set to handle the job for at least one week.
On the other side of the injury report, though, the defense took a late hit. Linebacker Ivan Pace Jr. was downgraded to questionable because of a non-injury related personal matter, and he did not travel with the team, leaving the Vikings to sort through another important absence before a big early-season test. [Read more 🡒]
J.J. McCarthy Just Put The Vikings In A Real Trade Debate
The injury to Jaxson Dart has put the quarterback market in motion again, and it has also created an interesting conversation around J.J. McCarthy in Minnesota. With the Giants suddenly needing answers, speculation has turned to whether they could call about the Vikings young quarterback, a development that only adds more attention to a situation Minnesota has been managing carefully.
Any trade talk would have to run through Kevin OConnells view of McCarthys future, and that is where the real debate starts. OConnell has shown interest in developing him, which makes an in-season deal feel complicated even before you get to the value question, but recent quarterback trades suggest McCarthy would not command a massive haul, perhaps landing somewhere in the range of a fourth- or sixth-round pick. [Read more 🡒]
Vikings Are Running Out Of Flexibility With Kyle Van Noy
The Vikings keep leaning on Kyle Van Noy as a short-term answer at edge, elevating him from the practice squad for a third time to help round out the pass-rush rotation for an upcoming game. Minnesota also made a separate roster move by signing punter Johnny Hekker to the 53-man roster and placing center Nick Samac on injured reserve, which created the opening needed to make the transaction work.
Van Noys status remains the bigger roster puzzle because this call-up only buys the Vikings one more game before he has to go back to the practice squad unless the team makes room for him permanently. Finding that spot could mean another move elsewhere on the roster, with cornerback Zemaiah Vaughn among the players who could be exposed if Minnesota decides Van Noy needs to stay in the mix. [Read more 🡒]