Report: Vikings Working Out Kickers This Week

UPDATE: Darren Wolfson is reporting that there are going to be a lot of kickers coming in tomorrow.

After his performance yesterday, fans everywhere were starting to wonder just how long a leash the Minnesota Vikings were going to have with kicker Blair Walsh.

According to reports, it appears that it’s shorter than any of us might have imagined.

Mike Garafolo of the NFL Network has passed along the news that the Vikings are going to be working out kickers this week. There hasn’t been any definitive word on who those kickers will be, though David McCoy of WCCO has floated a handful of names out there.

From McCoy’s tweet, those kickers are:

• Randy Bullock, who has spent time with the Houston Texans, New York Jets, and New York Giants.
• Garrett Hartley, who has played for the New Orleans Saints (and made the kick that handed the Vikings the loss in the 2009 NFC Championship Game), the Cleveland Browns, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
• Shayne Graham, who. . .at least according to his Wikipedia profile. . .has played for damn near every team in the National Football League.

Walsh’s performance on Sunday included a missed extra point and a field goal attempt that, had it not been blocked, was tracking so far left it might have ended up in another county. He also may or may not have botched the execution on the kickoff prior to the Lions’ final drive of regulation. After that, it’s not surprising that the team is looking at kickers at this point.

If the Vikings were to sign a kicker to replace Walsh, they would have to eat the rest of his salary for this season, and they’d take a dead money hit of about $1.6 million in 2017. They’d probably also have to do some salary cap gymnastics to make things work, given that they’ve got less than a million dollars under the cap.

Obviously we’ll be monitoring this story to see if the Vikings make this move.