In the fourth quarter of Sunday’s Vikings-Bears game in Chicago, a wicked hit sent Minnesota running back Aaron Jones’s helmet flying. Jones remained in the game.
The player who delivered the hit has been fined.
The NFL imposed a $22,342 sanction on Bears defensive back Tyrique Stevenson for impermissible use of the helmet. The rulebook prohibits a player from lowering his head and making forcible contact with his helmet against an opponent.
The infraction was not flagged; it rarely is. Typically, the situation is addressed with the imposition of a fine.
Impermissible use of the helmet is not one of the five violations that will result in an automatic suspension if there are three violations.
Vikings Clips
Vikings quarterback Kyler Murray’s return from a Week 1 concussion adds a separate wrinkle to the Week 3 game against the Buccaneers.
The game means that former Oklahoma teammates Murray and Baker Mayfield will have their fourth NFL meeting. Murray leads, 3-0.
Mayfield won the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma in 2017. Murray replaced Mayfield in 2018, and then Murray won it.
Their personal rivalry takes a back seat to the bigger picture. The Vikings hope to get to 3-0, and the Buccaneers need to avoid slipping to 0-3.
And there’s one interesting wrinkle that plays into the home team’s favor. Mayfield has faced a Brian Flores defense twice in his career. In 2019, Mayfield and the Browns beat the Dolphins. In 2023, Mayfield and the Bucs stunned the Vikings in Flores’s first game as the team’s defensive coordinator. Mayfield had five touchdown passes and one interception in those two games.
The Buccaneers elevated safety Ifeatu Melifonwu from the practice squad on Saturday, the team announced.
It is the final elevation for Melifonwu, as he played in the first two games. The Bucs will have to add Melifonwu to the 53-player roster for him to play again this season.
Melifonwu’s elevation gives the Buccaneers help on special teams and insurance at safety. Starters Antoine Winfield Jr. and Tykee Smith and backup Miles Killebrew are the only safeties on the 53-player roster, with rookie defensive back Keionte Scott playing in the slot.
Melifonwu has not played on defense, but he has logged 32 snaps on special teams.
He signed a one-year deal with the Bucs at the start of training camp after spending last season with the Dolphins. A third-round pick of the Lions in 2021, Melifonwu spent four seasons in Detroit.
He has appeared in 53 games with 22 starts and has totaled 125 tackles, 5.5 sacks, three interceptions and 14 passes defensed.
The Vikings traveled to Florida for Sunday’s game against the Buccaneers without linebacker Ivan Pace Jr.
Pace could still play.
The Vikings downgraded him to questionable upon announcing that he didn’t make the trip. Obviously, he’ll need to get to Tampa Bay another way.
Undrafted in 2023, Pace is in his fourth season with the Vikings. No longer a starter, Pace was on the field for 10 defensive plays against the Packers in Week 1 (plus 26 on special teams) and for 14 defensive plays against the Bears in Week 2 (plus 18 on special teams).
The Vikings have won seven games in a row, dating back to last season.
Vikings running back Aaron Jones worked his way up to a full practice on Friday and he’s set to play against the Buccaneers on Sunday.
Jones did not practice on Wednesday due to a knee injury and he was limited on Thursday, but the team did not give him any injury designation for the game. Jones has 35 carries for 145 yards and a touchdown so far this season.
Linebacker Jake Golday (ankle), running back DeeJay Dallas (toe), defensive lineman Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins (oblique), tackle Brian O’Neill (knee). and defensive lineman Jalen Redmond (elbow) also avoided injury designations.
Punter Brett Thorson (hamstring) and center Nick Samac (knee) have been ruled out. The Vikings signed Johnny Hekker to the practice squad this week and he will be elevated for Sunday’s game.
The Buccaneers will be missing a pair of rookie starters on defense when they face the Vikings on Sunday.
Head coach Todd Bowles said on Friday that first-round pick Rueben Bain has been ruled out with a groin injury and that second-rounder Josiah Trotter will miss the game with a shoulder injury.
Bain has gotten off to a slow start. He has one tackle through two games and has not provided the kind of pressure off the edge that the Bucs were hoping to get when they snapped him up in the first round.
Trotter has made more of an impact. The linebacker has 24 tackles, a sack and an interception return for a touchdown so far this season.
Kyler Murray will be back at quarterback for the Vikings when they take on the Buccaneers this Sunday and he won’t be playing with fears of a repeat of what happened in Week 1.
Murray was knocked out of the Vikings’ opener against the Packers after suffering a concussion while being hit by Lukas Van Ness and Javon Bullard at the end of a run. Murray said at a Thursday press conference that he felt back to himself “pretty quickly” and that the injury was a result of an unwieldy slide that put him in position to take a big shot to the head.
“I’ve really never had an issue protecting myself,” Murray said. “I’d like to think I’m one of the least-hit quarterbacks in the league as far as just protecting myself, getting the ball out and stuff like that. That’s new for me to have to go through that type of situation, because that’s the last thing I ever expected is to get a concussion just because I am very careful with being in open field and I know that was kind of an awkward slide situation, but I’m always trying to protect myself. . . . Van Ness was behind me you’re moving fast. You charge it to the game. I don’t judge anybody over there for anything that happened. It’s part of the game.”
Murray has missed plenty of other games with injuries over the course of his career, but none have come in a similar fashion as the Week 1 concussion and the Vikings will be hoping that he’ll be able to avoid a repeat in the weeks to come.
The Brian Flores case against the NFL and several teams (Dolphins, Texans, Giants, and Broncos) has recently focused on a document produced by Korn Ferry, in connection with a coaching search the company performed for the Ravens.
Korn Ferry and the NFL want the document to remain under seal and, as a result, not available to the public. Flores has challenged the designation.
In most federal civil cases, the presiding judge delegates disputes that arise during the discovery process to a magistrate judge. In this case, the magistrate judge has issued a ruling.
The ruling, as reported by Daniel Kaplan, is also under seal. For now.
The apparent reason for the decision is to give the party that lost the issue a chance to appeal to the presiding judge. And the fact that the decision is sealed doesn’t necessarily mean Korn Ferry lost. In order to issue the preliminary ruling, the magistrate judge likely had to quote from or otherwise describe key aspects of the currently secret document.
If the case goes to trial, the document undoubtedly will be presented and discussed in open court. But that’s a long way away. Securing the publication of the document sooner rather than later could create a bad P.R. look for the league, which could not only spark meaningful settlement talks but also prompt the media, the fans, and those with oversight of the league to sit up and take notice of the manner in which the sausage gets made.
For now, the question is whether the losing party on the issue of the sealed document will appeal within the 14-day time period for doing so. And whoever files the appeal necessarily will have been the losing party.
The Purple People Eaters are out. Young Nasty University is in.
Via Alec Lewis of The Athletic, the Vikings’ defensive tackles have adopted that name — “YNU” for short.
The founders are Domonique Orange, Ty Ingram-Dawkins, and Caleb Banks. Ingram-Dawkins, a fifth-round pick in 2025, and Banks, a 2026 first-rounder, are 23. Orange, a third-round selection in 2026, is 22.
“That group is a huge part of our success thus far,” Vikings edge rusher Andrew Van Ginkel said, per Lewis. “Last year, after not stopping the run early, we put a huge emphasis on it. We’ve got young guys who are coachable, hard workers, and they do everything right.”
The Minnesota defense has held the Packers and Bears to 3.8 yards per carry. And, as Lewis notes, the Vikings have devoted only $8.43 million to their defensive line — that’s the second-lowest amount for any NFL franchise.
Against the pass, the Vikings are thriving on chaos, with a risk-reward blitz-happy scheme that, to date, has had plenty of rewards.
The players will get their rewards in time. Starting with breakout star pass rusher Dallas Turner, who’s eligible for a second contract after what could be an All-Pro season.
The Buccaneers are 0-2, capped by a 23-19 loss to the Browns in the Tampa Bay home opener. And the sluggish start is having an impact.
Via JoeBucsFan.com, Hall of Famer Ronde Barber said this week that the vibe in the building is not ideal.
“Look, the mood is not great,” Barber said on his WFLA show. ”There’s too many mistakes. There’s a lack of urgency, if you will, in my mind when I look at them going onto the field. There’s got to be a little bit of a sense of a defining characteristic of your team through Week 2. I don’t know what that is. It’s mistakes. It’s busts. It’s lack of execution.”
Barber believes the Bucs simply weren’t ready for the games that count.
“Week 2 can’t be the fifth preseason game,” Barber said. “At some point you have to start hitting your stride. And it doesn’t feel like they’re in their stride right now on either side of the ball.”
“I feel like for much of the secondary, especially the coverage unit, they’re so focused on what they’re trying to do that they don’t know how to do it now.”
Barber also singled out former Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone, who signed with the Bucs as a free agent.
“There’s some dynamic going on, whether it’s not understanding what his role is in the defense, not understanding angles, maybe not having enough tackles in the preseason, I don’t know what it is,” Barber said. ”Something is hamstringing this defense in critical moments.”
It puts even more pressure on the Buccaneers for Week 3, the second of three straight home games. The official attendance last week was 61,391 — nearly 8,000 below capacity. (Often, the actual attendance is lower than the reported number.)
By the time the game was over, the fans who stuck it out through the lengthy weather delay weren’t happy. Those who show up for the next game will be even saltier if the Bucs slip to 0-3.
That makes it a dangerous game for the Vikings, who have overachieved to get to 2-0. This is exactly the kind of game in which the team that has done better than expected can step into a pothole against a team that has done worse than expected.
