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When the Minnesota Vikings placed linebacker Anthony Barr on injured reserve earlier this week, some people speculated that rookie Troy Dye might be in line to see a bigger role. In this case, “some people” refers to me and. . .well, I think that’s about it, actually.
However, if Dye is going to see a bigger role, that role isn’t going to expand for at least three weeks.
On Thursday, the Vikings placed Dye on injured reserve. Dye suffered a foot injury during Sunday’s loss to Indianapolis but returned to the game.
Here are details on #Vikings LB Troy Dye's injury. It's a midfoot sprain. Got rolled up on punt in the second quarter last Sunday and got it taped up and returned to the game. But it really swelled when he got up Monday morning. Vikings hope he's just out the 3 required IR weeks.
— Chris Tomasson (@christomasson) September 24, 2020
Dye was one of the Vikings’ fourth-round picks in 2020 and was playing quite a bit on special teams. Hopefully this will be a short-term thing, as Chris Tomasson’s tweet above says.
The Vikings are quickly running out of healthy linebackers here. Barr is gone, Ben Gedeon won’t be back until Week 7 at the earliest, Cameron Smith is missing the season after having open heart surgery during Training Camp, and now Dye is sidelined. The Vikings have Eric Kendricks, Eric Wilson, Ryan Connelly, and the newly-acquired Todd Davis as things stand right now. They also have Blake Lynch, Cale Garrett, and Hardy Nickerson on the practice squad.
We’ll have the full accounting of the Vikings’ injury report for today here shortly.