Vikings snipe talented CB from Raiders PS
Vikings snipe talented CB from Raiders PS
Going into the Minnesota Vikings’ week 9 game against perennial thorn in Mike Zimmer’ side the Detroit Lions, the Vikings are as thin at the cornerback spot as they must be in every pre-Draft nightmare Zimmer has before calling Rick Spielman at 3 am and screaming “I KNOW WE’VE GOT TWO FIRST ROUNDERS STARTING AT A POSITION WITH TWO PLAYERS BUT A GHOST OF DIVISIONAL GAME FUTURE TOLD ME WE NEED ANOTHER ONE!”.
As of the writing of this piece, the current state of the Vikings secondary is as follows (this breakdown is courtesy of SportsIllustrated.com):
Here’s a rundown of the status of all of the team’s cornerbacks:
- Jeff Gladney: healthy
- Cameron Dantzler: concussion/neck, hasn’t practiced this week
- Mike Hughes: neck, injured reserve – season might be over
- Holton Hill: foot, hasn’t practiced in over a month, IR candidate
- Kris Boyd: healthy
- Harrison Hand: hamstring, limited this week
- Mark Fields II: punctured lung, out several weeks
- Chris Jones: healthy
- Daryl Mabin: just acquired, not yet official
- Practice squad: Marcus Sayles, Luther Kirk
Yikes.
With that in mind the Vikings went cornerback a shoppin’ this week, looking through each teams’ practice squad for some semblance of help, for essentially the second week in a row.
It appears that they may have stumbled into a pretty intriguing prospect courtesy of the Las Vegas Raiders and their second-year UDFA corner Dylan Mabin. Also per SportsIllustrated:
“Mabin has decent size at 6’1″, 195 pounds. He’s a 2019 UDFA from Fordham University who signed with the Raiders and showed enough to stick around on the practice squad for the past two seasons. He made his NFL debut a couple weeks ago, playing eight snaps on special teams after being elevated to the active roster. He hasn’t played a defensive snap in the NFL.”
The Vikings, or rather Zimmer, have enamored with taller (or as Zimmer creepily refers to them, “longer”) corners, so Mabin definitely fits that bill.
Unfortunately for the Vikings, Mabin won’t be available for action this weekend as he needs to pass COVID protocol before joining the Vikings. But, it sounds like the Vikings may have found a diamond in the rough that is any practice squad player, so, we here at purpleTERRITORYmedia will follow Mabin’s career with interest and let you know our thoughts!
SKOL!