Kirby Wilson Is Probably Going To Cleveland After All

A couple of days ago, we brought you a story about the Minnesota Vikings preventing running backs coach Kirby Wilson from interviewing for the position of running game coordinator with the Cleveland Browns.

As it turns out, that was a temporary issue.

According to Matt Vensel of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Vikings could only block Wilson's interviewing with Cleveland for so long. As of today, Wilson is no longer under contract with the Vikings, so if he wants to go and work for newly-hired Browns' head coach Hue Jackson, he is free to do so.

Wilson has reportedly, according to sources (like this report from The Viking Age) developed a very close relationship with star running back Adrian Peterson. He also did a good job with Matt Asiata and Jerick McKinnon in Peterson's absence in 2014. I haven't seen anything as to whether or not Mike Zimmer and company made Wilson an offer to stay on as the running backs coach or anything, but even if they did, Wilson has/had the right to simply wait out his contract and explore other opportunities, and it appears that's what he has done.

According to Vensel's report, there should be something firm on this matter by the end of the week, but it would be pretty surprising if Wilson wasn't the running game coordinator for the Browns in relatively short order.

When I put together the earlier story about the Vikings blocking Wilson, I assumed that he was under contract for a while longer. It turns out that isn't the case, and that's my mistake. (Not that he was under contract, but assuming that he was.)

There hasn't been any word at this point as to who the Vikings might be looking at to be Wilson's replacement. Given how quickly they moved to replace former offensive line coach Jeff Davidson with Tony Sparano, my guess is that there won't be a whole lot of time to speculate.