Report: Everson Griffen involved in incident at Vikings hotel on Saturday

UPDATE #4: Another update from Chris Tomasson.

UPDATE #3: Chris Tomasson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press tweeted that Fox 9 issued an on-air correction to their report of Griffen being arrested in a separate incident. I can’t verify since I can’t watch, so I’m taking his word for it.

UPDATE #2: Tom Pelissero is now reporting that team sources are “strongly denying” that Griffen was arrested in a separate incident. He’s being evaluated at a local hospital.

UPDATE: We now have this to add to the story from Seth Kaplan of Fox 9 in Minneapolis. It doesn’t make things any better.

Original story follows.

On the final injury report that the Minnesota Vikings furnished prior to their loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, the team declared that defensive end Everson Griffen would not play because of a knee issue. But even though he was not going to be playing against the Bills, it was a bit unusual to hear that not only was Griffen not in uniform, he was not on the Vikings’ sideline, nor was he at U.S. Bank Stadium at all.

Today, we were given insight into exactly why that is. . .and it sounds like something that could be pretty serious.

According to a report from KSTP in Minneapolis, Griffen threatened to shoot someone at the team hotel on Saturday.

Sources confirmed to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that defensive end Everson Griffen was involved in an incident at the Hotel Ivy on Saturday.

According to police records, a person at Hotel Ivy was verbally threatening to shoot someone in the middle of the day on Saturday.

The Minneapolis Police Department redacted that person’s name from the report, but a source confirmed that it was indeed Griffen named in the report.

There’s a lot more about the incident at the link above.

When asked about Griffen, head coach Mike Zimmer simply stated that Griffen was dealing with a “personal matter.” General Manager Rick Spielman released a statement this afternoon about the situation.

“We are aware of the situation involving Everson Griffen and certainly concerned by what we have heard. We are currently focused on Everson’s well-being and providing the appropriate support for him and his family.”

I’m not afraid to tell you that I’m a huge fan of Everson Griffen. I think that anyone that’s read this site for any amount of time knows that. I’d love nothing more than to see him come back and chase quarterbacks around again. But, in this situation, I think it’s pretty obvious that the primary concern here has to be for Griffen’s mental health and well-being, and everything else should be secondary until such time that a competent professional declares that he’s okay.

Obviously, as more develops on this situation, we’ll keep everyone posted as best we can. The Vikings will be departing on Tuesday for Thursday’s game in Los Angeles against the Rams, so we’ll have to see if Griffen travels with the team or not. Given the current information we have, I’d be pretty surprised if he was on that plane.

(Hat tip to The Viking Age, as they had this story before we did.)