Vikings Bring In Punter For Workout

With about 28 or 29 of the other NFL teams, this might not be big news. However, here in Minnesota Vikings country, it is.

According to Judd Zulgad of 1500 ESPN (along with numerous other sources via the Twitter and other media), the Vikings brought in former San Diego State and Indianapolis Colts punter Brian Stahovich for a workout. Stahovich was an all-Mountain West Conference selection in 2012 with the Aztecs, averaging 43.4 yards per punt. He was signed by the Colts after going undrafted this season, but was cut by the Colts in late August.

The Vikings' incumbent punter, Chris Kluwe, has had a couple of off games recently. He averaged just 40 yards/punt on seven punts in the Week 7 victory over the Arizona Cardinals, and 37.8 yards/punt on six punts in the Week 8 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This could be something that the Vikings are doing to simply shake him up a little bit.

I do not, on the other hand, think that it has anything to do with Kluwe's stances on particular issues, nor his outspoken nature on those issues in the world of social media. I also don't think that his recent drop in performance has anything to do with those things, either.

Honestly, I don't think that Kluwe is any different this year than he has been in the past. He's always been into video games, he's always been active on Twitter and things like that, and he's always had stances on controversial issues. I think that with Election Day across America being a week from today, the sorts of things that people really didn't pay much attention to prior to this year have simply been amplified.

To connect Kluwe's recent struggles to his political activism is, in my opinion, as ridiculous as the "OMG CHRISTIAN PONDER TOTALLY SUCKS NOW BECAUSE HE'S DATING THAT SAMANTHA STEELE WOMAN FROM ESPN" corollary. Seriously. . .football players are human, too. Football players, just like all of us, have opinions on things. Single football players even. . .gasp. . .find single women and go out on dates. And some of them even get involved in relationships.

I know, right!

Okay, let me get off of my soap box here. Honestly, I don't think that Chris Kluwe is in any sort of danger of being cut by the Vikings at this point in the season. I do hope, however, that we start getting more of the performances we've become accustomed to seeing from him over the second half of the season.