Böhringer Looks Back On His First Year

Credit to the folks from The Viking Age to for tracking down this video first.

It was a little more than a year ago that the Minnesota Vikings made Moritz Böhringer the first European player to be drafted into the National Football League without having played college football.

Mike Wobschall from Vikings Media talked with Böhringer about his first year as a member of the Minnesota Vikings, which he spent on the team’s practice squad. He told Wobschall that the community in Minnesota has really embraced him and that he feels very comfortable in Minnesota. He also said that he’s looking forward to getting onto the field in 2017 and continuing to show improvement.

With the Vikings having gotten very little contribution from their 2016 rookie class, including Böhringer, the selection of the young German has been one that has lost a bit of its luster in the year since it was made. Though there aren’t a huge number of sixth-round picks that make immediate contributions in the National Football League, and a decent number that don’t even make NFL rosters, it seems that there has been extra derision given to this pick because Böhringer saw very few snaps even in the preseason in 2016.

Still, I’m not sure if there’s reason to completely abandon all hope that Böhringer can be a contributor to the team at this point. He’s obviously a gifted athlete, and if he’s had a year to get adjusted to the NFL game, I would expect to see some significant improvement from him. I certainly don’t expect that he would stand on the sideline for the entire preseason like he did last season, that’s for sure.

Böhringer may need another season on the practice squad, but the team can certainly do that if they think he’s shown some improvement from where he was last year. The selection of Böhringer may have been a serious leap of faith, but we’ve always said that those guys like that are the sort of players you take chances on in the sixth round of any draft.

A year removed, how do you feel about the selection of Moritz Böhringer?