Star Viking Gets a Great Update on Injury Recovery
Star Viking Christian Darrisaw was lost for the year in a loss to the Los Angeles Rams back in Week 8 of the 2024 NFL season. The good news is that he’s doing well in his recovery.
“Christian Darrisaw is doing really well in his rehab,” Kevin O’Connell explained at the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine. The head coach went on: “When you go through the tape and you really watch CD’s impact, I think he was playing as well as anybody in football through those first six weeks […] He’s having a great offseason, the rehab process, he’s absolutely killing it every step of the way.”
Star Viking Christian Darrisaw and The Knee Injury
Rick Spielman gave Minnesota’s new leadership regime a tremendous gift in Mr. Darrisaw.
The left tackle got scooped up at No. 23 back in the 2021 NFL Draft (Spielman’s final draft in charge). Since then, Darrisaw has left no doubt about his potential: when healthy, he’s a borderline elite left tackle. Therein lies the issue, though: the 6’5″, 315-pound tackle has battled injury in his NFL career.
Consider just a basic rundown of his games played since entering the NFL:
- 2021: 12 Games
- 2022: 14 Games
- 2023: 15 Games
- 2024: 7 Games
At some point, the Vikings are going to want the trend to stop. Mr. Darrisaw is now signed to a major extension, a deal that’s tipping the scales at $104 million across four years. He has earned the large deal but the hope all around is obviously for greater health moving forward.
Winning in the NFL often comes down to matching up well. To that end, having an elite LT1 is extremely important. Minnesota can leave Darrisaw on an island to square off with a tremendous edge rusher and be reasonably confident that the purple quarterback isn’t going to get slammed into the grass.
Alongside Brian O’Neill, Christian Darrisaw forms one of the NFL’s most impressive tackle tandems. Keeping those two healthy is the key.
Darrisaw, 25, has a lot of football ahead of him. He’ll move into the 2025 season carrying a cap charge a bit below $9.7 million.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference 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 social media (Bluesky & Twitter). If you feel so inclined, subscribe to his Substack, The Vikings Gazette, for more great Vikings content.