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Hat tip to the folks from The Viking Age, who had this one before we did.
With the Minnesota Vikings less than two weeks away from making their way to Mankato for Training Camp, we’re hopefully going to be hearing more stories about offseason preparations and things of that nature. From some evidence that we’ve been given today, quarterback Teddy Bridgewater might be more prepared than some of us were expecting.
Bridgewater today posted pictures on his Instagram of some of his workouts, and in the pictures that he posted, you can clearly see that he is no longer wearing a brace on the knee that he injured a little less than a year ago.
Teddy doesn't need no stinkin' brace...#SKOL pic.twitter.com/2iITulH6gY
— Adam Patrick (@Str8_Cash_Homey) July 12, 2017
Now, this obviously doesn’t mean that he’s ready to get back on the field yet in a live-fire situation. But given the nature of his injury and what we’ve all heard he would have to go through to be able to get back, it appears to be another encouraging development.
Having said that, I still expect that Bridgewater is going to start Training Camp on the Physically Unable to Peform List, and I expect him to start the regular season on that list as well. As we’ve been over numerous times, the language of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement seems to indicate that if Bridgewater is on the PUP List when the regular season starts, he will be forced to miss the first six games of the season. That would cause his contract to “toll,” or roll over so that he would still be under contract to the Vikings for the 2018 season.
The downside of that is that, when he’s on the PUP List, all he can do is agility/conditioning drills and individual work. He wouldn’t be able to work with the rest of the team in any capacity per NFL rules. But, with Sam Bradford going into the last year of his contract and now with the potential to have Bridgewater under team control for 2018, that seems to be the prudent route for the Vikings to go.
If he doesn’t start out on the PUP List, however. . .well, it’s going to make for quite the competition at the quarterback spot in Training Camp and the preseason. It’s going to confuse the heck out of me and a lot of other fans, too, but that certainly won’t be the first time that’s happened.