Spielman “optimistic” that Danielle Hunter will only miss three weeks

Yesterday, we got the news that Minnesota Vikings star defensive end Danielle Hunter was going on Injured Reserve, meaning that he would be forced to miss the first three games of the 2020 NFL regular season. Hunter had been dealing with a “tweak” for some time, and the team thought it was serious enough to keep him out of the team’s games against the Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, and Tennessee Titans.

However, in an interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio on Thursday, Vikings’ GM Rick Spielman seemed optimistic that those three weeks would be all that Hunter would miss and that he would be able to return for when the Vikings travel to take on DeShaun Watson and the Houston Texans in Week 4.

“I think we’re very optimistic – and we’ll see how it plays out – that Danielle (Hunter) hopefully will be able to be back after the three weeks. But we’ll reassess where we’re at with the injury and make a decision from there.”

Now, given how this has all played out thus far. . .and, for the most part, how injury disclosures have gone throughout the Mike Zimmer era. . .I’m not sure how much we can buy into the optimism at this point. I know we’re all hoping that Hunter will be back on the field in a few weeks, but at this point it’s a little tough to feel confident that’s going to happen. Fortunately, the emergence of Ifeadi Odenigbo and the acquisition of Yannick Ngakoue should serve to make Hunter’s absence sting a little bit less.

If you have the SiriusXM app, you can listen to the entire interview that Bruce Gradkowski and Bruce Murray conducted with Spielman today.