At Long Last, Dalton Risner Becomes a Starter
Took a while, didn’t it? Dalton Risner has finally been inserted into the starting lineup, a decision that a lot of Vikings fans will greet with applause.
Prior to the game getting started, Ben Goessling foreshadowed the switch: “Dalton Risner, not Ed Ingram, is warming up at right guard with the first-team offensive line. Looks like a change in the Vikings’ lineup today.” Once the game got going, the change became official as Mr. Risner hopped into the RG1 spot.
Dalton Risner Becomes the Starter at Right Guard
Predictably, the switch at right guard has caught people’s attention.
Janik Eckardt, Managing Editor for PurplePTSD, has written about the news. There has even been a follow-up piece to help explain Kevin O’Connell’s rationale for shuffling the starters along the offensive line, a move that’s generally met with some resistance since o-line continuity is prized by NFL coaches.
O’Connell suggested after the game that Risner’s “veteran presence” was a factor. The head coach indicated that he needed to “look at the tape” to form a fuller opinion while praising Ingram for “asking great questions” and being “prepared.”
“It’s definitely not going to be a week-to-week thing, but we are going to allow some competition to play out,” O’Connell goes on to explain, “while the season is still, seven games left, and the ability to try to hunt that best five.”
On Monday, O’Connell again met with the media. After digesting the film, O’Connell offered these thoughts on his new RG1: “I thought he battled, I thought he showed some of that veteran kind of moxie to kind of win some downs that were some hard downs, and then I think there were some things he’ll continue, just with the speed and physicality of it, find his groove. So I was really happy with the way Dalton stepped in, just kind of with the poise of the veteran that we’re kind of looking for.”
PFF wasn’t super impressed with the work that Mr. Risner did, giving the new starter a perfectly average 50.0 grade. Now, keep in mind that the veteran lineman was starting his first ever game along the other side of the line and he was doing so against DTs Jeffery Simmons and T’Vondre Sweat, both of whom are studs (as O’Connell discusses in his post-game press conference).
In 73 snaps, Risner got dinged for allowing a pair of pressures but PFF suggests that he didn’t commit a penalty, allow a sack, or a QB hit. So, not disastrous but far from elite.
The suggestion in Minnesota is that the plan will be to continue rolling with Dalton Risner as the starter. Presumably, he’ll get better as he becomes more comfortable in the starting spot. Playing alongside Brian O’Neill helps and the real key will rest in helping to keep Sam Darnold upright. Be a good blocking buddy with O’Neill and keep Darnold from getting walloped: do those two things and a starting spot is likely permanent in 2024.
In the offseason, Dalton Risner got re-signed for just a single season on a deal that’s kicking over $2,410,000. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has proven to be quite reluctant to hand over major money to interior linemen, so the medium-sized deal suggests that the Vikings felt that Risner could push for a starting job even as Blake Brandel was looking like a relatively sure bet to be the LG1.
Standing at 6’5″ and weighing 312 pounds, the 29-year-old Risner could leverage this current opportunity into a larger deal in the offseason. Being capable of playing solid football at both guard spots could be enough to nudge a team toward handing over the sizable deal that Risner covets.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference, PFF, and Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on Twitter, as a co-host for Notes from the North, and as the proprietor at The Vikings Gazette, a humble Vikings Substack.