Instead, one wrong step and the Vikings were taking another spin on the nearly 50-year carousel. Bank Stadium that would get the Bridgewater hype train at full speed.Īs Bridgewater walked off the field after a touchdown pass to Kyle Rudolph, it felt like things were falling into place for a team that has struggled to find a franchise signal-caller since Fran Tarkenton retired. An opening game performance saw him hit Charles Johnson for a long touchdown, but it would be his Week 3 performance in the first (unofficial) game at U.S. Such games should be taken with a grain of salt, but Bridgewater was the most locked in a Vikings quarterback has been since Brett Favre‘s 2009 season. With a surprise NFC North title and a playoff victory that should have been if it weren’t for Blair Walsh, many were expecting big things from Bridgewater in 2016, which led to a sparkling preseason performance. As a result, Bridgewater didn’t immediately have the stats that would make him an obvious fixture for the Vikings.īut there were some flashes that gave Vikings fans some hope, including a four-touchdown game against the Chicago Bears in Week 15 of the 2015 season. Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen were still young (or not yet drafted), so Bridgewater had to settle for Greg Jennings and Mike Wallace. The first two seasons of Bridgewater’s career were eerily similar as they were played with the same offensive coordinator, Norv Turner, and the same cast of weapons. The Vikings wanted to roll with Matt Cassel to give Bridgewater a “redshirt” in his rookie season, but that lasted two games as Bridgewater was thrust into action and his effectiveness was erratic as a result. Bridgewater before the injuryĪfter the Vikings traded up to grab Bridgewater with the 32nd overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, the wait was on to see when Bridgewater would take the field. Nearly four years removed from the injury, it’s curious to see what the Vikings would have had and if they would have been better off. Minnesota tried to lessen the blow with a pair of panicked moves to get a quarterback, including burning a first-round pick on Sam Bradford and backing a Brinks truck to the home of Kirk Cousins, but the quarterback position has never had the same upside than when Bridgewater was under center.Īs sports have continued to be silent during the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of what exactly would have happened if Bridgewater never got hurt grows louder for some Vikings fans. With an injury so grotesque it reminded his surgeon of a war injury, the Vikings path as a young, up-and-coming team was drastically altered. Teddy Bridgewater, the charismatic quarterback of the future, was two weeks away from hitting the field for the 2016 season, took a wrong step and suffered a career-altering non-contact knee injury early in practice. That day was a dark day for fans of the Minnesota Vikings because it was the day a collective piece of their soul died. In the way my brain is wired, I flashback to Aug.
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