EAGAN — There is no such thing as a normal day during the NFL season. On Wednesday the Minnesota Vikings made another addition to the roster and the Chicago Bears had multiple major/bizarre stories that will impact their season. Let’s dive into all of it…
Cam Akers is now a Viking
The Rams found the most obvious home for their former second-round running back, who has recently fallen out of favor with head coach Sean McVay. Akers, who was acquired for merely a draft pick swap in 2026, spent 2021 with Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell and should have enough familiarity with his offense to adapt fairly quickly.
Why did the Rams trade Akers? Two notes from The Athletic on that:
“Team sources indicated Akers’ healthy scratch was performance- and consistency-related not exclusive to games.”
“The Rams tried and failed to trade Akers in 2022 after a stretch of what team sources called communication issues between the running back and the team.”
Last year things went poorly for Akers for the majority of the year. He topped out at 61 yards in a single game over the first 14 weeks but then exploded in the final stretch of the season gaining 118, 123 and 104 yards in Week 16-18 and finished the 2022 season with a respectable 786 yards, seven touchdowns and an 80.7 PFF grade (27th).
In Week 1 he had a very strange stat line. Akers ran 22 times for 29 yards — and that included a 12-yard carry. In Week 2 he did not play. In Week 3 he was traded. That escalated quickly.
The Vikings are the NFL’s worst running team through two games so it doesn’t come as a shock that they would be looking for outside help. Alexander Mattison has run 19 times for 62 yards to start the year and has averaged just 3.7 yards per carry since Kevin O’Connell took over the offense last year (4.2 YPC from 2019-2021). But is Akers an upgrade?
The 24-year-old runner has had a very rocky career with his 2020 and 2022 seasons being filled with ups and downs. It isn’t easy to predict where things might go from here but he is young and talented. The Vikings also needed someone who has played football before to spell Mattison. In two games they played second-year back Ty Chandler a total of 18 snaps and he rushed four times for zero yards. Whether Mattison can be a bell cow back or not is still to be determined but even the most heavily used RBs get more production from that from RB2. Heck, Emmitt Smith’s backup in 1995 even got 4.4 attempts for 18.6 yards per game.
Similarly to the situation with guard Dalton Risner, it’s worth asking why this didn’t happen earlier. Was Kene Nwangwu’s injury situation unclear when they were bringing in running backs for visits in August? Even then there was an extreme lack of experience in the backfield.
O’Connell said Wednesday that the coaching staff looked for answers during the mini bye week and began working on some new coaching points to shore up the rushing attack.
“We were able to find some things that we really wanted to emphasize with our guys starting on Monday and so much of it just comes back to simple simple elements of technique, fundamentals, understanding of what we’re trying to get done,” O’Conell said. “Where’s the landmark of the back? Where’s the aiming point to where I could set my blocks based upon the leverage of the defender?”
The run game may be assisted by not playing the Buccaneers or Eagles and instead facing off with a Chargers club that has given up over 100 yards per game over the opening two games.
Risner’s status for Week 3 is unclear
Interestingly, O’Connell was not interested in pulling back the curtain on the Dalton Risner signing.
“I don’t really want to get into the why now, some of which is sometimes hard to explain, some of which is easy to explain,” he said, adding, “we will obviously have to make decisions to get the best five guys on the field.
It seems we won’t know why it took until Week 3 after Risner visited at the end of July.
Will he play against the Chargers?
“Dalton is very intelligent, I do know he’s chomping at the bit to get going and got here as fast as he could but he’s still only been here for essentially one walk through at this point and we’re about to start our Wednesday practice to prepare for the Chargers so a lot to be determined,” O’Connell said.
“We’re going to play the best five combination that we can,” O’Connell added.
In Risner’s first comments as a Vikings he repeated a similar refrain multiple times that he’s willing to play anywhere.
“I want to earn the respect of these guys, and I want to show up every day and show them I’m willing to do whatever role that is. If you need me to carry pads off the field after practice, I’ll do it,” Risner said. “I really don’t care what that role is for now. I just want to earn the respect of guys on this team.”
Injury report
The Wednesday injury report is not always the strongest indicator of which players will be active on Sunday but it isn’t a good sign for Garrett Bradbury or Marcus Davenport’s chances that neither player participated. Bradbury has been out since early in Week 1 with a back issue that also plagued him last year.
Whether Risner could be in the mix at center is unclear but that seems unlikely since he hasn’t snapped a ball since 2015. Davenport played four snaps against the Eagles and couldn’t continue, leaving Patrick Jones and DJ Wonnum to fill the void.
On the Chargers’ side, neither star running back Austin Ekeler or linebacker Eric Kendricks participated in practice. Those could be huge absences if neither player can go at US Bank Stadium.
The Chicago meltdown
The Bears (and national media) spent the entire summer talking about “the next step” for young quarterback Justin Fields. The only step he’s taken is backward over the opening two weeks of the season. He has averaged 6.5 yards per attempt, thrown two touchdowns, three interceptions and ranks 28th of 33 QBs by PFF.
During his weekly press conference Fields had some comments that appeared to point the finger directly at the coaching staff.
“You know, could be coaching I think,” Fields said to reporters Wednesday morning. “At the end of their day, they are doing their job when they are giving me what to look at, but at the end of the day, I can’t be thinking about that when the game comes.”
“I prepare myself throughout the week and then when the game comes, it’s time to play free at that point. Thinking less and playing more.”
After practice, Fields called the media over to claim that he was “taken out of context” on social media.
“I’m not blaming anything on the coaches,” said Fields. “I’m never going to blame anything on coaches, never going to blame anything on my teammates. I will take every — whatever happens in a game — I will take all the blame. I don’t care if it’s a dropped pass and it should have been a pass. Put it on me.”
Analysts have noted Fields’s lack of designed runs and it appears the coaching staff wants him to play in a more structured way, which may be an attempt to find out whether he can truly operate an offense in a make-or-break year. So far he has not passed that test.
Oddly enough, that wasn’t the biggest event at Halas Hall. Bears defensive coordinator Alan Williams mysteriously resigned, citing health and family issues. Through two weeks the Bears have allowed the second most points in the NFL (65).
If the Vikings are looking at their actual chances to make the playoffs despite an 0-2 start, they have to be factoring how terrible the Bears have looked to open the season and the overall underwhelming nature of the NFC North.
