Kevin O’Connell Discusses IOL Dalton Risner During Press Conference
Josh Frey
|
On Monday evening, a report surfaced that the Minnesota Vikings would be hosting free agent IOL Dalton Risner for a visit.
Risner could prove to be a strong addition to Minnesota’s offensive line depth, and head coach Kevin O’Connell discussed his visit and potential impact during his press conference on Tuesday.
“We’re always looking for ways to find good football players when they’re available,” O’Connell said of Risner’s visit. “We really just wanted to bring him in and get to know him a little bit better, use the process of a visit to do that, and see if we can possibly take what we think is a strong group and make it even better. It’s gonna be a process that starts with that visit, and I think it’s gone really well so far, and we’ll just continue to kind of see if that’s something that makes sense for both ourselves and Dalton.”
An interesting component of a potential Risner signing is the battle that it would create between himself, Ezra Cleveland, and Ed Ingram for the two starting positions. Cleveland is entering a contract year in 2023, and with no extension to his name yet, he seems like a candidate to hit free agency next spring and potentially leave the team. Meanwhile, Ingram was selected in the second round of the 2022 NFL Draft by Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, but he struggled mightily in pass protection during his 17 starts last year.
However, O’Connell would not speculate on whether or not Risner would take over one of those starting positions.
“That’s not anything I can say as far as his role or responsibility would be, depth chart-wise. It would be purely speculation on my part to envision what a player not on our team would potentially do to that situation.”
That being said, training camp is all about competition within a roster, with 90+ players competing for just 53 spots. ” We want this to be as competitive at all positions as we possibly can,” O’Connell added. “Hoping to put the best 11 guys out there at each phase of our team, whether it be offense, defense, and special teams, but competition tends to make everybody better.”
It certainly seems that Risner would bring great competition to that guard position in Minnesota. He has started 62 of a possible 66 games over the course of his first four NFL seasons, and unlike many guards in previous Vikings history, his biggest strength is pass-protection rather than run-blocking.
O’Connell had a lot of praise for the pieces already in place along the offensive line, though.
“We’ve got great competition already at that particular position and still seeing daily growth, and really the offseason’s worth of work from everybody along that offensive line has really shown early on,” the head coach sumised. “[Risner’s visit is] purely something about taking something that we feel is pretty strong already and investigating the possibility of making it even better.”
Risner has played primarily the left guard position during his NFL career. While that may be a spot where he wants to continue playing at, he has experience both at center and right tackle dating back to his collegiate days with Kansas State. It seems that Minnesota may have at least inquired about the possibility of him playing all over the offensive line if he were to join the Vikings.
“I know his predominent history has been on that left side. That’s one of the reasons why you bring a player on a visit, have those conversations, and we feel very comfortable about his answer to that question,” O’Connell stated.
In all, there is no news yet as to a potential signing of Risner, but things seem to be trending in the right direction, given the positive comments from O’Connell. As things continue to progress, you can be sure that we will have all the Risner information covered here at PurplePTSD.
Josh Frey is a Class of 2020 graduate of The College of Idaho and managing editor of PurplePTSD.com. When he’s not writing about the NFL, Josh enjoys running, gaming, or rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks. Check out his Twitter account: @Freyed_Chicken.