I have to start here by giving a pretty massive apology to the good folks over at Pride of Detroit. With all the StarCaps news and the stuff about the Williams Wall that's come out this week, I've managed to pretty much ignore this afternoon's contest. I'll make up for as much of that as I can in this post here.
Let's start out by looking at the injury reports for both teams for today's game, and then we'll get into a few other things. We'll start with the injury report for the Beloved Purple.
This is one of Minnesota's longer injury reports of the year. And it should be longer, because this particular report doesn't contain the name of DE Brian Robison. Robison had arthroscopic knee surgery earlier in the week and will be out for a couple weeks.
Of the remaining players on the injury list, Hicks and Mills both had limited participation in Friday's practice, and I wouldn't be surprised to see both of them inactive this afternoon. This would mean another start for Ryan Cook at right tackle, which would be his second in a row after getting benched just prior to the Jacksonville game.
The rest of the players shown on the injury report had full participation in Friday's practice, according to NFL.com.
Now, on to the Lions' injury report:
There are three players for the Lions that NFL.com has listed as "Out" that don't appear on the report above. Those players are LB Alex Lewis, DE Dewayne White, and QB Dan Orlovsky. QB Drew Stanton is also unlikely to play, which means that journeyman Drew Henson will be the primary backup to Daunte Culpepper this afternoon for the Motor City Kitties.
Of the remaining players on Detroit's injury report, Peterman and Redding are both listed as having full participation in Friday's practice (as is Stanton, but he's already been ruled out), while the remaining players were all limited in their participation.
One name that you didn't see on the Vikings' injury report. . .and won't be seeing there for the rest of the year. . .is WR Robert Ferguson. The Vikings cut the former Packer a couple of days ago in order to make room for their newest signing. That newest signing? That would be defensive tackle Jimmy Kennedy.
Yes, the same Jimmy Kennedy that many people were angry that the Vikings passed over for Kevin Williams in the 2003 draft. . .and I'll admit to being one of those people at first. But while Kevin Williams has gone on to become the best all-around defensive tackle in the National Football League, Kennedy has been a pretty massive flop. (And at 6'4" and 320 pounds, "massive" is a pretty accurate description.) By signing with the Vikings, he's already up to his fourth NFL team, having been drafted by the St. Louis Rams, then moving on to Chicago and finally to Jacksonville, who had released him after their game against Minnesota a couple of weeks ago.
Kennedy is kind of intriguing. . .he's big, and someone obviously thought that he had talent at some point in time. If anyone can get anything out of the guy, it would be Vikings' DL coach Karl Dunbar. With the Williams Wall being intact for this week's game, I'm not sure how many snaps he'll actually see. . .heck, I'm not even sure what number he's going to be wearing. . .but hopefully he can get some work in at some point this afternoon.
I'll get a post about what this game means for the Vikings in the playoff standings here shortly. The game thread, as per usual, will be going up right around 10:00 AM Central time. Keep it tuned right here, ladies and gentlemen!