Minnesota Vikings Release Fred Evans

The Minnesota Vikings have started their cuts, and the first one is a bit of a surprise.

As we reported on our Minnesota Vikings Cutdown Tracker, the first guy out the door is none other than defensive tackle Fred Evans.

Of all the 53-man roster predictions I've seen over the past couple days, I'm pretty sure that every one of them had Evans sticking with the team, but Mike Zimmer and company apparently had other ideas.

Fred Evans joined the Vikings in 2007 after playing his rookie season with the Miami Dolphins. A sixth-round draft choice out of Texas State, Evans was a solid rotational player for the Vikings during his seven seasons in purple.

This pretty much means that seventh-round rookie Shamar Stephen. . .who, as was pointed out in the comments of our cutdown tracker, did start the third pre-season game in place of Linval Joseph. . .has made the squad. One would think that Tom Johnson will have a spot in the rotation as well.

If this is a sign of things to come, we might be in for a more exciting afternoon that anyone had planned.