Parry Nickerson Gets the Call to the Active Roster in Week 15
Josh Frey
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Ahead of the Minnesota Vikings matchup with the Indianapolis Colts in Week 15, they made some last-minute roster moves in the final 24 hours before their game. On Friday afternoon, the Vikings announced that it would be Parry Nickerson getting the call from the practice squad at cornerback.
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Nickerson, a Tulane product and five-year NFL veteran, has been a journeyman throughout his career. In fact, 2022 is the first time he’s spent consecutive years with a team after joining the Vikings in 2021.
The cornerback was drafted in the sixth round of the 2018 NFL Draft by the New York Jets. During that season, he played all 16 games and started twice for the Jets. It remains the only season in which he’s played every game in a season, and he recorded 21 tackles, a TFL, and a pass defense during that season. The Jets finished 2018 with a 4-12 record.
After that 2018 season, Nickerson entered much more of a depth role, playing fewer than 200 snaps in each of the following three seasons. He played four games with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2019, making one start. It remains his most recent start after not starting a game in either 2020 or 2021. In that start, he played all 38 of the defensive snaps that he’d see during 2019, and he recorded 3 tackles in a 38-20 victory over the Indianapolis Colts.
2020 was Nickerson’s slowest season of his career, playing just two snaps all year long. He was signed by the Green Bay Packers practice squad after Jacksonville waived him prior to the season’s start. While he was activated off the practice squad twice, he appeared in just one game.
In that Week 8 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Nickerson suffered a hamstring injury that left him sidelined for the remainder of the season, and Green Bay let him walk. This allowed the Vikings to snatch him up in May of 2021, and he played four games for Minnesota that year.
In the first three of those games, Nickerson played exclusively on special team again, but in Week 18 against the Chicago Bears, he also saw 17 snaps on defense. He recorded a single tackle in the 31-17 victory for the Vikings.
So far in 2022, Nickerson has been stashed on the Vikings practice squad and is yet to see any action. This looks to be his first opportunity to see the field and given Cam Dantzler’s illness leaving him questionable along with his recent ankle injury that had him on IR, the possibility of Nickerson seeing defensive snaps again in Week 15 cannot be ruled out. Dantzler spent much of Week 14 rotating in and out with Duke Shelley in his first game back from injured reserve, and that could happen again, assuming he suits up at all.
We are mere hours away from Saturday’s noon kickoff, and the inactives list prior to the game will give much more clarity as to what the Vikings plans for Nickerson may be.
Josh Frey is a Class of 2020 graduate of The College of Idaho with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. He also earned minors in History, Human Biology, and Journalism. When he’s not writing about the NFL, Josh enjoys marathon training, playing video games, or rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks. For more of his opinions, check out his Twitter account: @Freyed_Chicken.