Vikings Injury Updates on Justin Jefferson, Marcus Davenport, Nick Mullens

Could Jefferson be back this weekend in Denver? We'll see.

Author:
Will Ragatz
Publish date:
Nov 14, 2023 5:30 PM EST

In this story:

There's a chance Vikings superstar Justin Jefferson could make his highly-anticipated return to action this Sunday night against the Broncos, but it'll depend on how he progresses in practice this week.

Jefferson has missed the last five games — which have all been Vikings victories. He was back at practice last week and the team is planning to continue ramping him up this week. After Sunday's win over the Saints, Jefferson tweeted that he can't wait to play with this group, which now includes Josh Dobbs at QB.

But the Vikings have made it clear that Jefferson won't play in a game until his hamstring is at 100 percent, which might not be the case by this weekend.

"We’ll see," Kevin O'Connell said on Monday. "We’re going to ramp him up. He handled the workload that we started him out with last week, opening up his window to get him back on the practice field. We’ll see what that looks like throughout the week, maybe a little bit more here or there. Nobody wants to be out there more than Justin, but we’re going to continue to be smart with (him)."

We should learn more as the week unfolds about Jefferson's chances of playing against the Broncos.

Here are a couple other Vikings injury updates:

OLB Marcus Davenport (ankle)

Davenport had the tightrope procedure to address his high-ankle sprain, so it doesn't seem like he's going to be returning soon. "He'll more than likely be available at some point," O'Connell said. "I don't know when that'll be and don't want to speculate on that."

QB Nick Mullens (back) and QB Jaren Hall (concussion)

"My hope is to open Nick Mullens’ (practice) window this week," O'Connell said. "As far as his availability to be activated to the roster, that will be determined based upon getting him a little more work. I believe Jaren more than likely will be hopefully cleared and be able to be a participant in practice and then we see what that looks like, if Nick’s able to be activated and we have Jaren, we could possibly have all three with the emergency quarterback rules."

Update: The Vikings did in fact open Mullens' practice window on Wednesday, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be activated this week.

In other words, it sounds like Hall will be cleared from concussion protocol to serve as Josh Dobbs' backup this week. If Mullens isn't activated from IR, Sean Mannion could serve as the third quarterback.

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