The 4 Most Surprising Vikings Players at the Halfway Mark
It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows for the 2025 Minnesota Vikings, but they have a 4-4 record and a shot to reach the postseason. Along the way, a handful of players have stood off the page, helping to keep the season alive.
At the halfway point of the 2025 season, these four Vikings have shattered expectations — delivering breakout performances few saw coming.
Minnesota next plays the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, and if they win, things will truly be looking up.
These men are the unsung performers at the season’s halfway point, which will officially occur at halftime of Vikings-Ravens.
Vikings’ Most Surprising Players thru 9 Weeks
The guys who kept the enterprise afloat in an unforeseen manner — listed alphabetically.
1. Levi Drake Rodriguez (DT)
Drake Rodriguez is developing into a fine defensive tackle, specializing in run defense in Brian Flores’ system, which has stumbled when stopping the run in the first two months of 2025.
Last year’s 7th-Rounder owns a 66.3 Pro Football Focus grade, with a 63.6 in stuffing opposing running backs. The second-year defender plays about 42% of the time, a percentage on par with Harrison Phillips’ second year in the NFL while playing for the Buffalo Bills.
At his current pace of development, Drake Rodriguez could be a mainstay of the Vikings’ defensive line at this time next year. He’s improving weekly.
2. Myles Price (KR/PR)
Myles Price is averaging 26.4 yards per kickoff return — and that number would be even higher if not for a few costly flags wiping out extra yardage. He’s also sitting at 9.6 yards per punt return, a mark that puts him squarely in the middle of the pack but trending upward as his confidence and opportunities grow.
He’s Minnesota’s most dangerous return man since Coradarrelle Patterson, and you can just take it to the bank that he will break a kick return or punt return for a touchdown any day. You can feel it.
It will help if his team stops with the special teams penalty parade.
It’s also worth noting that Price was an undrafted free agent from April. All of his production is gravy.
Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell said this week about the 2025 kickoff return tweak and Price’s role, “It’s a unique play. There’s no question it’s a unique play, But there’s just so many — the game day roster, where maybe you would have looked at certain positions as a little bit more negotiable for the game day roster.”
“Now you say that you need this many body types, this many skill sets to make sure that you understand it’s maybe the one play in special teams that has been so unique for this year. It’s affecting starting field position. It’s affecting the ability to respond when a team scores, as we saw in Detroit early on in the game. I think as teams get more comfortable with the schemes, the body types, the type of players that are in there, and those guys start to get more accumulated reps. You’re seeing high level of execution.”
Price has 4.43 speed.
“I don’t have any data on this, but it feels like one of the more penalized plays on either side around the NFL. And I think that’ll continue to come down as guys kind of learn the space, or lack thereof, that there is on the play. But every single Sunday, it’s a critical play,” O’Connell continued.
“I think Myles Price has had a big-time role in not only the kick return, but the punt return phase of understanding what it can be for our team, especially where we’ve been at statistically in previous years, it was a major thing we wanted to try to make sure we were doing to play the type of complimentary football we wanted to play.”
3. Jalen Redmond (DT)
Redmond hasn’t really turned in a bad outing all year, and his snap count reflects it. He’s carried over the momentum from last season’s breakout and turned it into a full-fledged starting role on Minnesota’s defensive line.
He’s no longer a wait-and-see guy — Redmond is legit. Absolutely legit.
In Week 8 against the Los Angeles Chargers, he racked up nine quarterback pressures — an absurd total for anyone, let alone a defensive tackle. He also posted a 90.3 PFF grade, the kind of number you rarely see in a single week.
And it’s not some one-off performance. Through 2025, Redmond owns a 69.9 PFF grade, ranking 30th among all NFL defensive tackles — proof that his rise isn’t a fluke but part of a steady climb.
4. Isaiah Rodgers (CB)
Rodgers captivated the nation in Week 3, netting two mammoth defensive touchdowns and providing sticky coverage on Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins in a blowout win over the Cincinnati Bengals. He also nearly returned a field goal block for a touchdown at Detroit; the man is a playmaker.
His PFF grade is modest at 65.6, but he’s a true playmaking asset in Flores’ defense. Fans are never quite sure what he might do next. His 92.1 passer-rating-against is good but not great.
Rodgers is also the fastest player on the team with 4.28 speed.
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