Vikings have plan for starters, backups in regular season finale
Kevin O'Connell intimated Friday that Kirk Cousins, Justin Jefferson and the starters on offense and defense will begin Sunday's regular season finale against the Chicago Bears, but how long they play is the question.
"We've got a pretty clear cut plan with how we want to go about the whole game, but we're going to go in with the expectation of our guys going and try to get off to a good start and play good football," O'Connell said.
O'Connell said they'll probably get backups "some snaps here and there."
Any player who is dinged up or battling an injury is far less likely to play.
"You gotta be smart about where they're at. What type of risks for possibly aggravating a current injury or potentially, more importantly, making it worse. We don't know quite when we'll play next week yet. It's possible we could play on Saturday and we'll have to fast forward the week a little bit on shorter-term notice," the head coach said.
"This is the time when you rely on the communication of how each player on our roster is feeling. It's been a long season for a lot of guys, played a lot of snaps."
If the Vikings beat the Bears and the 49ers lose to the Cardinals, the Vikings will get the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs and face the Packers, Seahawks or Lions in the first round. If the 49ers win or the Vikings lose, the Vikings will be the No. 3 seed and host the Giants on Wild Card Weekend.
Minnesota has already ruled center Garrett Bradbury and defensive lineman James Lynch out with injuries, and Za'Darius smith, Cam Dantzler and Brian Asamoah are all questionable. Smith's status is not because of an injury.
"It's a personal matter for him. The full expectation is he'll be in Chicago with us," said O'Connell.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.