The Minnesota Vikings will hold their first official training camp practice on Wednesday, and one player fans should be keeping tabs on is second-year EDGE Dallas Turner.
The Vikings parted with considerable draft capital to move up and select Turner with the No. 17 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. Perhaps even more surprising was his rookie-year usage — just 310 total defensive snaps over 17 game appearances.
Turner found himself buried behind a pair of Pro Bowlers in Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel. The two veterans are both under contract for years to come, after Van Ginkel’s offseason extension, so defensive coordinator Brian Flores could have to get creative to get one of Minnesota’s premier young players on the field more in 2025.
It would be silly to call the Vikings a poor landing spot for a young defender, but Turner probably could have found a quicker path to playing time with a different team. Turner certainly didn’t expect to land with Minnesota, as he detailed in a recent sit-down with the CJ and Chat Podcast.
Turner said he met with 16 teams at the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine, and he never got the sense that Minnesota would come calling on Day 1 of the draft.
“The teams would never really let you know. For real,” he said. “It’s not how it is in college, like, ‘We’re trying to recruit you’ and ‘We want to attract you to come to our school.’ It’s like, ‘We decide whether we want you or not.’
“The team that wants you the most, you might not even know. Like, the Vikings — I didn’t even know that at all. It wasn’t the most fun meeting, I ain’t gonna lie. It was definitely a good meeting, but I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
Turner didn’t go into detail about his meeting with Minnesota. His interviewers also didn’t ask him about the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s report that Turner lost $240K in a banking scheme this offseason.
Maybe GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Co. were all business during their pre-draft meeting with Turner. They hid their desires well, as Minnesota traded a massive haul of assets to acquire the former Alabama Crimson Tide star.
Including their initial deal with the Houston Texans to secure an extra first-round pick in the 2024 draft, No. 23 overall, the Vikings essentially traded this package for Turner:
- Vikings receive: 2024 No. 17 overall (EDGE Dallas Turner), 2024 seventh
- Vikings give up: 2024 No. 23 overall (WR Brian Thomas Jr., Jacksonville), 2024 second (Houston), 2024 fifth (Jacksonville), 2024 sixth (Houston), 2025 second (Houston), 2025 third (Jacksonville), 2025 fourth (Jacksonville)
Turner’s Vikings tenure isn’t exactly off to a torrid start, and both parties need that to change in short order, starting with the first practices of training camp this week.
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