ESPN Nominates Vikings Playmaker for “Fresh Start”
The Minnesota Vikings have two running backs under contract for 2025 as it stands in late February.
ESPN Nominates Vikings Playmaker for “Fresh Start”
Those men are Ty Chandler, a player entering season No. 4 this September, and a little-known runner named Zavier Scott.
And according to ESPN, the Vikings should allow Chandler to pursue a fresh start this offseason, as the tailback ended up manning RB3 duties in 2024. ESPN’s Kevin Seifert explained, “A fifth-round draft pick in 2022, Chandler has entered the past two seasons as the Vikings’ No. 2 running back. In both cases, however, the team traded for veteran Cam Akers to supplant him on the depth chart, making its limited faith in him clear.”
The ESPN article nominated one player from each NFL team for a “fresh start,” so it’s not like Chandler was singularly targeted.
“Chandler has good speed and has been productive when forced into action, especially during the second half of the 2023 season, when he rushed for 419 yards in the Vikings’ final eight games. There’s enough skill and ability there to project that things could go differently in a new environment,” Seifert added.
The Vikings’ halfback is fast as hell — he ran a 4.38 forty-yard dash leading up the 2022 NFL Draft — but struggles with pass blocking. Accordingly, Chandler has never caught on as Minnesota’s RB1 or RB2 and hence received the RB3 demotion last season when Minnesota traded for Cam Akers.
Down the stretch of the 2023 season, however, Chandler showed intense flashes of promise, stimulating Minnesota’s stale ground game in a couple of contests against the Cincinnati Bengals and Detroit Lions that year. The Vikings showcased Alexander Mattison as RB1 in 2023, an experiment that totally flopped, and by December 2023, Chandler had taken the big job.
It’s just that he didn’t have staying power.
In fact, at this time on the offseason calendar last year, some theorized Chandler as the long-term RB1 fix. Minnesota’s front office disagreed, signing Aaron Jones in free agency and plopping Chandler at RB2 until the aforementioned Akers trade.
General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is expected to push for a Jones reunion this offseason while possibly re-signing Akers. That might leave Chandler out in the cold, proving the ESPN theory correct.
This year’s draft is also abundantly deep at running back, and the Vikings could find a Chandler replacement from that event in late April.
Chandler will turn 27 in May.
A Vikings Dream Will Finally Come True
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. The show features guests, analysis, and opinion on all things related to the purple team, with 4-7 episodes per week. His Vikings obsession dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ Basset Hounds, and The Doors (the band). He follows the NBA as closely as the NFL.
All statistics provided by Pro Football Reference / Stathead; all contractual information provided by OverTheCap.com.
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