Vikings running back Aaron Jones is not expected to miss game or practice time due to the quad injury that kept him out of the fourth quarter of Sunday’s win over the Packers, coach Kevin O’Connell said Monday.
Kevin O’Connell says Vikings will have Aaron Jones, possibly Pat Jones II available in Detroit
Vikings running back Aaron Jones did not play in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s win over the Packers due to a quad injury.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
December 30, 2024 at 10:48PM
Jones, whose 1,471 yards from scrimmage are 88 yards shy of setting a new career high, exited at the end of the third quarter after he was tackled by Packers linebacker Edgerrin Cooper for a 2-yard loss. He finished with 77 yards from scrimmage on 16 touches.
O’Connell said the team received “really positive news” on edge rusher Pat Jones II’s right knee, which took a low cut block from Packers tight end Tucker Kraft in the second quarter. Vikings edge rusher Jonathan Greenard called out Kraft on social media, saying, “Be a man block up high,” and calling on the league to ban low blocks.
“You’ve got to defeat the block,” LaFleur said Monday, “and there’s a lot of different ways to do it. … They did it to us twice in the game. What are we talking about?”
Jones’ status against the Lions is uncertain. A fourth-year defender with a career-high seven sacks, Jones has been dealing with right knee issues for at least a month.
“He’ll have a chance to even possibly make it this week,” O’Connell said. “We’ll see how he works through it.”
Otherwise, the Vikings are “relatively healthy,” the coach said, heading into Sunday night’s game at Detroit, where the Vikings can take back the NFC North and earn the No. 1 seed, first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs with a win.
The Vikings are 1-4 against the Lions under O’Connell.
“We’ve had chances to win games against those guys,” O’Connell said. “We haven’t always been at our full capacity whether it’s T.J. [Hockenson] or quarterback, you know, whatever it’s looked like at the skill positions or on defense, so being relatively healthy at this point of the season is a big bonus, for sure. But we’re going to roll the ball out and it’s going to be 60 minutes of both teams laying it all on the line to be NFC North champs.”
Keeping Darnold clean
Quarterback Sam Darnold had “phenomenal” protection against the Packers, O’Connell said.
The numbers check out. Darnold was one of three passers in Week 17 to throw for over 300 yards and three touchdowns from a clean pocket, according to Pro Football Focus, joining the Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield and the Bengals’ Joe Burrow. Darnold was kept clean on 30 of his 44 dropbacks.
The one sack he took is the fewest allowed by the Vikings since the Nov. 10 win in Jacksonville. A quicker passing game also helped. Darnold’s 2.86-second average time to throw was his fastest since the Nov. 3 win over Indianapolis.
After surrendering some quick pressures to Packers blitzes, including one by safety Xavier McKinney on third down in the first quarter, the Vikings offensive line improved as they played.
“These [defensive] coordinators are good,” center Garrett Bradbury said. “As the season goes, it’s all about making adjustments. It’s putting in a new protection or changing the rules of a protection. But as long as we’re all on the same page and we get the right checks, we’re confident we can keep Sam clean.”
‘It’s everything you work towards’
As Darnold was being hoisted onto his teammates’ shoulders in the Vikings locker room, team cameras captured O’Connell standing off to the side with a smirk as he watched everyone celebrate.
“I tried to stand all the way up against the wall, but they still got me [on camera],” O’Connell said. “It’s obviously for Sam. … Sometimes this thing goes so fast and you’re so caught up in the 1-0 aspects of things and the day-to-day, the minute-to-minute, this adjustment and this coverage. For me sometimes, I don’t really feel a lot of those things until a moment like that.”
“It’s everything you work towards, with a goal in mind of a lot of little, little things, a million little things you think about coming together in that moment,” he added. “I was just proud of the guys and of course for Sam, I thought it was awesome.”
Etc.
- The Vikings will discuss signing quarterback Daniel Jones to the active roster this week, O’Connell said, so he would factor into the 2026 compensatory draft pick formula should he leave via free agency in March. Jones, cut by the Giants last month, has been on the practice squad since Nov. 29. “Daniel’s been quietly behind the scenes putting in some phenomenal work,” O’Connell said. “More excited now … just by what he’s shown us already.”
- Darnold now has 4,153 passing yards, becoming the fifth 4,000-yard passer in Vikings franchise history, joining Daunte Culpepper, Warren Moon, Kirk Cousins and Brett Favre. Darnold’s 35 touchdown passes have tied Cousins’ 2020 for the second-highest single-season mark, behind only Culpepper’s 39 in 2004.
- The Vikings opened as 2½-point underdogs for Sunday’s regular season finale in Detroit, where the Lions are 6-2 at Ford Field this season. This is the first time the Vikings are betting underdogs since their Week 4 trip to Lambeau Field.
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