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In the interest of getting you the final 53-man roster for the Minnesota Vikings in a relatively timely manner. . .even after the team waited until after 5:00 PM Central to put it out there. . .we missed a couple of minor tidbits about a few of the last transactions that the team made while setting the roster.
First, there has been some clarification on the trade the Vikings made to acquire cornerback Mark Fields from the Kansas City Chiefs. While the original reports said that it was a seventh-round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, and that’s partially correct. However, as Ben Goessling of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports, it’s a conditional seventh-rounder.
One additional point on the Mark Fields trade: The 7th-round pick is based on Fields being on the Vikings' roster for an agreed-upon number of games, per a source. If Fields isn't on the roster long, in other words, the deal wouldn't cost the Vikings anything.
— Ben Goessling (@GoesslingStrib) September 1, 2019
The actual number of games has not been clarified anywhere that I’ve seen, but the fact that it’s a conditional seventh basically means that Fields is getting an extended tryout with the Vikings. If the team sees progress, they can give up that selection. If they don’t, he can be cut and the Vikings end up not paying anything.
In addition to that, a couple of the Vikings’ final cuts were waived with injury designations. That means that, if they go unclaimed on waivers, they will go on the Vikings’ injured reserve list. Those players were safety Isaiah Wharton and defensive end Ade Aruna.
Wharton was signed in early May, and his signing brought the Vikings’ roster to 90 players. The Vikings put him at safety, which was already one of the deepest positions on the roster, and he couldn’t make the uphill climb necessary to get on the roster.
Aruna is a player that just couldn’t get healthy in time, unfortunately for him. After being selected in the sixth round of the 2018 Draft by the Vikings, he tore his ACL during a preseason game at U.S. Bank Stadium, and was not fully recovered in time to make an impact this season. It’s a bit surprising, at least to me, that he didn’t start out on the Physically Unable to Perform List, but that’s not what the Vikings decided to do.
That should put a bow on the Vikings’ transactions to get down to 53 players. Now, with waiver claims set to come in at around noon Central time, we’ll see how many changes the roster has and who the Vikings attempt to put on the practice squad.