Dallas Turner and The 926 Reasons to Believe in a Sophomore Jump
Something odd is occurring among the Vikings’ edge rushers, but a sophomore jump — not a slump — from Dallas Turner would likely lead to a world where few notice.
The position is being led by a pair of Pro Bowl veterans in Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel. Both have proven to be excellent players and there’s very little reason to believe that their excellence will cease in 2025. What’s odd is merely that four of the team’s seven edge rushers are UDFA players. Turner is the bridge between the two extremes — the established vets and unproven UDFAs — among the edge rushers.
Dallas Turner as the Key to the Vikings’ EDGE Position
Back in March, the Vikings opted to give Turner a promotion.
No, there wasn’t an official announcement, but there was a willingness to let Patrick Jones II depart in free agency (thereby factoring into the compensatory picks formula). So, too, did Kwesi Adofo-Mensah opt against signing an established veteran to function as a key depth piece.
Further contributing to the idea that Turner is going to see an increased role is the basic fact that Jihad Ward remains unsigned. In other words, the EDGE3 (Jones) and EDGE4 (Ward) from 2024 weren’t a major priority to keep around. Why not?
The plan, quite evidently, is for Dallas Turner to ascend to EDGE3.
Dallas Turner played in sixteen games as a rookie, earning 300 snaps for Brian Flores’ defense. Along the way, Turner snagged 20 tackles, 3 sacks, 5 QB hits, 3 tackles for loss, 1 interception, and 1 pass defended. Not a massive earthquake but he showed up on the Richter scale.
Kick out his snaps, tripling them to mirror the opportunity that Greenard and Van Ginkel earned. Both started all seventeen games while clearing 900 snaps for Coach Flores. What could Turner’s stats have looked like?
If we assume a consistent output across 900 snaps, then Turner would have finished his rookie season with 60 tackles, 9 sacks, 15 QB hits, 9 tackles for loss, 3 interceptions, and 3 passes defended. Those numbers look quite a bit different, don’t they?
Football, of course, is more complicated than simply multiplying snaps and then trusting that statistics will perfectly replicate themselves. The possibility exists that that occurs, but it’s by no means a foregone conclusion.
Maybe more snaps would have led to Dallas Turner refining his craft, improving his efficiency along the way as he improved his statistical efficiency. Or, perhaps, the increased snaps would have led to a worn down defender as Dallas Turner struggled to carry the workload of an NFL-level pass rusher across the 900 snaps, worsening his efficiency. There could even be some sort of jumble of factors at play all at once.
Nevertheless, there’s still the possibility to press the point that the title makes.
Losing both of Jones and Ward means forfeiting a pile of snaps for Flores. More specifically, the team allowed 926 defensive snaps to walk out the door. No huge addition has been made, revealing that Dallas Turner is being looked at as the successor to the departed veterans, someone capable of soaking up a lot of those snaps.
Minnesota’s top edge rusher tandem is going to continue being leaned on. Afterwards, the focus shifts to Turner and then several unproven youngsters. Indeed, the team will need to get some play out of Bo Richter and Gabriel Murphy, a pair of UDFA sophomores. If those two aren’t capable of helping in a major way, then the other roster solutions consist of rookie UDFAs Tyler Batty and Chaz Chambliss.
Of course, Adofo-Mensah could always dip into his open cap room — currently sitting at a touch beyond $23.5 million — but the GM would sooner let the young fella succeed. Look for Mr. Turner to be given every opportunity to be a weekly difference maker in 2025.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference and Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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