Plenty of Players Sit Out Vikings’ Monday Practice

There’s some good news and some bad news to be found at today’s Minnesota Vikings’ practice at Winter Park.

The good news is that wide receiver Stefon Diggs, who had to sit out the Thanksgiving Day loss in Detroit, is back at practice and says that he "expects to be out there" on Thursday night when the Vikings host the NFC-leading Dallas Cowboys.

The bad news? Here are all of the players that sat out of Monday’s practice session

• Joe Berger (still in concussion protocol)
• Sharrif Floyd (whatever the heck is still wrong with him that’s caused him to miss 10 games after a routine knee scope three freaking months ago)
• Eric Kendricks (knee)
• Captain Munnerlyn (ankle)
• Marcus Sherels (rib)
• Harrison Smith (ankle)

Chad Greenway was also not practicing today, but he has a pretty good excuse. . .he’s with his wife, who should be delivering the couple’s fourth daughter any time now.

Offensive tackle Jeremiah Sirles is apparently back practicing after his leg injury on Thanksgiving, but Berger being out is still a bit troubling. If he’s unable to go on Thursday, Nick Easton will start in his place. Terence Newman appears to be back and practicing as well.

That seems like a lot of important players sitting out of today’s practice session, but if we look back on the pre-Thanksgiving injury report, Smith was a DNP in two of the three practice sessions leading up to the game, while Kendricks and Munnerlyn were both limited. All of them wound up playing on Thanksgiving, so maybe it’s too early to panic yet. Still, when you’re facing a team that comes in at 10-1 and in the driver’s seat for home field advantage in the NFC playoffs, this is far from an ideal situation.

Obviously, we’ll be keeping an eye on all of these injuries leading up to this Thursday’s kickoff.