The Vikings’ Young Pass Rusher and The 926 Reasons to Believe He’ll Shine in 2025
Last season, Patrick Jones II was the EDGE3, picking up 459 defensive snaps across fifteen games (one start). Jihad Ward was the EDGE4, putting in 467 defensive snaps in seventeen games (two starts). Neither has been retained.
The Vikings’ young pass rusher is thus stepping into a defense that has 926 snaps that are up for grabs.
Dallas Turner, still only 22, is coming off a rookie season that left some underwhelmed and some hopeful. Others maintain a balance of both perspectives. To be sure, the price to get him to Minnesota was tremendously costly, spiking expectations for the defender coming out of Alabama. Can he blossom more fully as a sophomore? If so, what will be behind the growth?
The Vikings’ Young Pass Rusher
Dallas Turner & The Hope that Exists for 2025
Sometimes, what a team doesn’t do is as important as what a team does do.
No doubt, building a more formidable front for the defense was a top priority. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah handed out pretty major money to get Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave to the Twin Cities, a pair of veterans who know a thing or two about getting after the quarterback. The key detail? Both play defensive tackle.
As mentioned up top, Mr. Jones walked away, signing a strong deal with the Panthers. Ward, meanwhile, is still looking for work. Failing to make any huge additions at that edge rusher spot — mammoth UDFA aside — tells us something: the plan is for Dallas Turner to ascend to OLB3.
Lately, the Vikings’ main leaders have been making an effort to keep Mr. Turner within the discussion surrounding the Vikings. Head coach Kevin O’Connell made sure to shoehorn him into a conversation, predicting a “huge jump.” Meanwhile, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has mentioned “the dark arts” of pass rushing at least a couple times, connecting the thought to the Vikings’ young pass rusher.
Dallas Turner played in sixteen games as a rookie, earning 300 snaps for Brian Flores’ defense. Along the way, Turner snagged 20 tackles, 3 sacks, 5 QB hits, 3 tackles for loss, 1 interception, and 1 pass defended. Not a massive earthquake but he showed up on the Richter scale.
Kick out his snaps, tripling them to mirror the opportunity that Jonathan Greenard (the EDGE1) and Andrew Van Ginkel (the EDGE2) earned. Both started all seventeen games while clearing 900 snaps for Coach Flores. What could Turner’s stats have looked like?
If we assume a consistent output across 900 snaps, then Turner would have finished his rookie season with 60 tackles, 9 sacks, 15 QB hits, 9 tackles for loss, 3 interceptions, and 3 passes defended. Those numbers look quite a bit different, don’t they?
Football, of course, is more complicated than simply multiplying snaps and then trusting that statistics will perfectly replicate themselves. The possibility exists that that occurs, but it’s by no means a foregone conclusion.
Maybe more snaps would have led to Dallas Turner refining his craft, improving his efficiency along the way as he improved his statistical efficiency. Or, perhaps, the increased snaps would have led to a worn down defender as Dallas Turner struggled to carry the workload of an NFL-level pass rusher across the 900 snaps, worsening his efficiency. There could even be some sort of jumble of factors at play all at once.
Nevertheless, there’s still the possibility to press the point that the title makes. Losing both of Jones and Ward means forfeiting a pile of snaps for Brian Flores & Friends. No huge addition has been made, revealing that Dallas Turner is being looked at as the successor to the departed veterans, someone capable of soaking up a lot of those snaps.
No, he may not triple his workload — going from 300 to 900 snaps is a large jump — but seeing him at 600 or 700 snaps shouldn’t be a surprise. And, perhaps, he finds a way of flirting with 900 snaps.
The Vikings’ hope is that Turner proves them right, taking a massive step forward as a sophomore who is looking to shine in the NFL just as he was able to shine in college. More opportunity alongside better ability is the hope at TCO Performance Center.
The edge rusher is stepping into the second season of his rookie contract, meaning he’s offering the potential at great value since he’s carrying a very small $3,583,378 cap charge in 2025.
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 Twitter and Bluesky (@VikingsGazette). If you feel so inclined, subscribe to his Substack, The Vikings Gazette, for more great Vikings content.
