The Vikings placed safety Joshua Metellus and outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard on injured reserve, ending their seasons.
Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell announced on Monday that Greenard’s second season with the Vikings would end with shoulder surgery after the edge rusher aggravated his injury in Sunday’s victory over the Cowboys. He initially injured his shoulder in Week 10 against Baltimore.
Metellus also had been playing through a shoulder injury, which has had him on the injury report since Week 13.
Metellus totaled 86 tackles, half a sack, one tackle for loss, two quarterback hits, a team-high two interceptions and six passes defensed.
“We’ve just been evaluating that shoulder, kind of a week-in and week-out basis, and got home late Sunday, went through some of the medical evaluations Monday and into yesterday, and it’s been determined he’s going to get his shoulder fixed,” O’Connell said Wednesday, via Craig Peters of the team website. "[Vice President of Player Health and Performance] Tyler [Williams] and his group, our doctors and Josh feel like this is the right time to not risk possibly injuring it any more.”
O’Connell said Metellus and Greenard will remain around the team and be “heavily involved” in helping to push their teammates to finish the season in the right way.
Greenard totaled 38 tackles with three sacks, 10 tackles for loss, 12 quarterback hits, three passes defensed and a forced fumble.
The Vikings also announced that rookie tight end Gavin Bartholomew is returning to practice this week. He has spent the year on the reserve/physically unable to perform list.
Vikings safety Josh Metellus will not play in the team’s final three games of the season.
Head coach Kevin O’Connell said at a Wednesday press conference that Metellus will be placed on injured reserve and have surgery on his shoulder. O’Connell made the same announcement about edge rusher Jonathan Greenard earlier this week, so the Vikings defense will be down two starters the rest of the way.
Metellus signed a three-year extension with the Vikings before the start of the 2025 season. He started all 14 games that Minnesota has played this season and ends the year with 86 tackles, two interceptions and a half-sack.
Harrison Smith, Tavierre Thomas, Jay Ward, and Theo Jackson are the other safeties on the 53-man roster for the Vikings.
With the Dolphins apparently moving on from quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, the next question becomes where his career will continue.
Plenty of teams will be looking for quarterbacks in the offseason. Tagovailoa has shown that he can operate an offense at a high level, when the play that’s called is there. When the play that’s called is stymied by the defense, things often go haywire.
Former Dolphins cornerback Xavien Howard, who spent the early part of the season with the Colts before retiring, said after the Colts blew out the Dolphins in Week 1 that, if the first read is taken away, Tua slips into “panic mode.”
Whatever the label, he freezes. As the defender approaches, he doesn’t throw the ball away. He lacks the agility and speed to run away from the pressure and make something happen, like Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and/or Lamar Jackson. The play just disintegrates.
And while the Dolphins have tried, in vain, to coach him toward a solution for a play that goes sideways, another coach may think that he can do what neither Brian Flores nor Mike McDaniel have been able to accomplish in six NFL seasons.
It all comes down to the options available for the teams that will be looking for a veteran quarterback. Those teams currently include, in our assessment, the Jets (he’s 7-0 against them), Steelers, Browns, Raiders, Vikings, Falcons, and Cardinals.
If the Dolphins cut Tua, he can sign with another team for the veteran minimum, like the Steelers did last year with Wilson. It’ll be a low-risk, high-reward option for a team that believes it can get more out of Tua than the Dolphins did.
And if enough teams are interested, perhaps a trade becomes possible. Even if the Dolphins would have to pay a lot of the money Tua is owed next year.
It’s not a crazy thought, even if it won’t be easy to get him to bail on a bad play before the bad play becomes a sack or a fumble or an interception. Given the good things he has shown he can do — good enough to get a $53.1 million per year contract — some team will be willing to give Tua a try.
They can’t all be winners, can they?
As the NFL continues to make Christmas a pro football holiday, the trend has potential pitfalls. Including the very real possibility that the games to be played on December 25 will have little if any meaning to either or both of the teams involved.
Recent developments have made this season’s three-pack of games something far less enticing than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
It will get started in nine days with Cowboys at Commanders. Both teams are more cooked than overdone roast beast.
Then comes Lions-Vikings. Detroit is scrambling to avoid missing the playoffs, which gives the game a little pop. The Vikings — who have won two in a row and are 6-8 — were eliminated on Sunday, when the Bears beat the Browns.
The day ends with the Broncos at the Chiefs. With the Chiefs eliminated. And with Gardner Minshew playing quarterback for the home team. Why would folks in Kansas City want to venture out on Christmas night to watch that one?
For in-home viewers who root for other teams, there’s a certain schadenfreude factor that will prompt those who had developed Chiefs fatigue to tune in and relish what should be a long night for the franchise that had appeared in three straight Super Bowls and five of the last six. Still, it will hardly be must-see streaming for Prime Video.
One factor is the calendar. With Labor Day landing on September 1 this year, the season started as early as it ever does. Which puts Christmas in Week 17. Which makes it harder to effectively predict in May the games that will matter in late December.
For that reason, don’t be surprised if the NFL eventually builds flexibility into the Christmas games, like it does for the late-season Saturday when five games are flagged as candidates for the three standalone spots.
Few teams are eliminated and thus irrelevant by Thanksgiving. More teams are and will be out of it by the time Christmas rolls around. If the NFL wants to maximize the audience for those games, it will have to either hit the bull’s-eye in May, or it needs to have the ability to move the dart.
Vikings linebacker Jonathan Greenard will miss the rest of the season with a left shoulder injury, coach Kevin O’Connell said Monday.
Greenard’s injury will require surgery.
“It was something he was playing through,” O’Connell said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN. “He knew he would not be able to put this behind him until probably he got it fixed, whenever that was going to be. And just looking at coming out of [Sunday night] and aggravating it and just it feels like the best time to do that now.”
Greenard initially appeared on the practice report with a shoulder injury in Week 11, having injured it in the Week 10 game against the Ravens. He missed two games before returning to play 15, 29 and 44 snaps the past three games.
Greenard aggravated the injury in Sunday night’s 34-26 victory over the Cowboys.
He finishes his season with 38 tackles, three sacks and 12 quarterback hits.
Greenard had double-digit sacks in 2023 with Houston and in 2024 in his first season in Minnesota.
Rookie Dallas Turner is expected to see more snaps in Greenard’s absence.
