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In the midst of all their roster moves, the Minnesota Vikings formalized something that we all saw coming.
It's official: the #Vikings are placing Teddy Bridgewater on PUP to start the season, per sources.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) September 2, 2017
According to close, personal friend of The Daily Norseman™ Tom Pelissero (now of the NFL Network), the Vikings have officially placed Teddy Bridgewater on the Physically Unable to Peform List, meaning that he will be forced to miss the first six games of the regular season (at a minimum) and could open up a whole can of worms about his contract status.
Bridgewater suffered a devastating non-contact knee injury a year ago, and though he has made a remarkable recovery to this point, head coach Mike Zimmer has said on numerous occasions that Bridgewater would have to prove that he could protect himself before he would be able to make it to the active roster. Judging from this move, he has not proven to Zimmer’s satisfaction that he can do that.
Per the language of the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, players that are physically unable to perform their football duties for the first six games of a season will have their contract “tolled,” or rolled over to the next season, if they’re in the final year of a deal. It sounds like the NFLPA might have an issue with that, but as we’ve said on numerous occasions, this is something that they collectively bargained with the NFL owners, so I’m not sure how much they can do about it.
In any case, we definitely won’t be seeing Teddy Bridgewater behind center in a game situation for the Vikings for at least the first six weeks of the 2017 NFL season. Beyond that? Nobody knows for sure, but you can bet that we’ll all be watching.