It sounds like Adam Thielen dodged a pretty serious injury

We know that Adam Thielen wound up being listed on the injury report on Wednesday after suffering an ankle injury in practice. The story was that he had gotten stepped on by a teammate during practice and wound up needing stitches in his foot, but we now know just how close Thielen was to suffering a pretty serious injury.

Here is the story from Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network. It’s less than two minutes, so listen to the whole thing.

“He immediately reached down, felt his own Achilles, realized it was intact and then said, ‘Okay, this is not a major injury.’”

I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.

So Thielen’s injury could have been significantly worse than it wound up being. Had he suffered a serious enough injury to his Achilles, it not only would have put him out for today’s game against the San Francisco 49ers, but it could have even put his availability for the start of next season in doubt, as Achilles injuries can take a significant amount of time to recover from.

As it stands now, however, Thielen was merely listed as “questionable” on this week’s final injury report, and is expected to play this afternoon in the Vikings’ playoff game. Here’s hoping that he has the same sort of impact that he had in last Sunday’s big win in New Orleans.