Apologies for the lack of an update yesterday. All of the weekend's events left me in a Favre-induced coma for most of my Monday.
Access Vikings tells us that Coach Childress feels that Ray Edwards is fairly close to making his return to the lineup. He won't see any action against the Kansas City Chiefs in the joint practice that will take place on Thursday, 31 July, but should be back shortly thereafter, which means the entire starting defensive line will finally be on the field together.
Thankfully there have been no other major injuries to this point. Hopefully this trend will continue. There have been a few instances of folks sitting out practices for minor tweak (Thomas Tapeh and Garrett Mills among them), but nothing catastrophic to worry about.
Looking around various Vikings communities at this early stage of Training Camp is always quite entertaining, because there seems to be two different groups of people. There are the folks that calmly sit back and absorb what's happening in practice and what not, realizing that the team is going to need some time to gel. . .I'd like to think that I'm part of that group.
Then we get the people that read the Training Camp reports from the Star-Tribune and the Pioneer Press, and draw well thought out, logical conclusions such as
-"Tarvaris Jackson threw another interception. It's going to be just like last year!"
-"Bernard Berrian dropped a couple of passes. He's just like Troy Williamson!"
-"Antoine Winfield got beat in coverage. I TOLD you that guy can't cover anyone!"
Most of the folks on this site, from what I've seen, fall more into the former category than the latter. Really, these guys have been playing honest-to-goodness football now for about four days after not having played together since New Year's Eve. There's rust to shake off and chemistry to be created. There's really no reason to panic about anything at this point.
Now, if someone gets injured or something, THEN we'll panic. But, hopefully, the Vikings will continue to be healthy through the month of August.
Hopefully we'll have some more Training Camp updates to talk about later on. Unfortunately, that's all we've got at the moment. Be sure to take a look over at the FanPosts, as Admiral BigGun from Vikings Valhalla has posted a bunch of Training Camp pictures for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!