Report: Bridgewater Held Out Of Seahawks Game With Sore Shoulder

It seemed a bit unusual when the Minnesota Vikings' offense took the field in Seattle on Thursday night under the direction of Shaun Hill and not Teddy Bridgewater. Following the game, Mike Zimmer was not terribly forthcoming with information about his young quarterback taking a seat. However, we finally got a little bit of clarity on the issue on Friday afternoon.

According to a report from Ben Goessling of ESPN, two different sources have told him that Bridgewater was held out of Thursday's game due to a sore shoulder. The reports don't specify if it was his throwing shoulder or his non-throwing shoulder, and also said that if Thursday night's game had been a regular season contest, Bridgewater would have gotten the start.

Given that the Vikings don't play again until a week from Sunday, one would think that Bridgewater would be ready to go by then. Hopefully that will be the case.

What I don't get is all the cloak and dagger that appears to have gone into this. I know that we all love Mike Zimmer and his take no BS attitude, but this seems to be a strange thing to try to be secretive about. It's a preseason game. . .if your franchise quarterback (or the guy you've hitched your wagon to, at the very least) isn't healthy enough to go, there's no shame in saying that he isn't healthy enough to go. But Bridgewater wasn't on the list of players that weren't going to play on Thursday, nor was Shaun Hill on the list of new starters that were distributed to reporters. His absence from Thursday's game was a complete mystery until Hill took the first team offense out onto the field.

I love Mike Zimmer as the coach of this team as much as the next Vikings fan. But I have to be honest. . .I really don't see any upside to the way this situation was handled if what Ben Goessling is reporting is true (and I have no reason to believe that it's not).