Vikings Cut Ties With Keith Baxter, Jason Whittingham

At their 2016 Training Camp, the Minnesota Vikings have had just one practice in full pads, but that’s apparently enough for them to decide that there were two players they wanted to cut ties with on Monday.

One of those players, linebacker Jason Whittingham, had signed with the team just last Tuesday. I’m not sure how much of an impact he had made at practices, but apparently it wasn’t enough to hang around.

The other player, defensive back Keith Baxter, is a little more of a mystery. The Vikings signed Baxter as an undrafted free agent about a week after the 2016 NFL Draft. He was with the team during offseason activities and mini-camp, but had not been seen at Training Camp at all this week. Head coach Mike Zimmer said that Baxter had been hospitalized, but did not elaborate further on exactly what had happened.

So, with these cuts, the Vikings are back down to 88 players. That means we can go back to speculating about whether or not the team will sign a punter to compete with Jeff Locke or a quarterback to compete with Joel Stave and/or Shaun Hill for a spot behind Teddy Bridgewater on the depth chart. At first glance, those would appear to be a couple of need areas, but who knows which players Rick Spielman and company are looking at presently?