Is LB2 Ivan Pace in Danger of Getting Leapfrogged?
So far, Eric Wilson has been impressing. Can the same be said of Ivan Pace?
One wonders if the third-year player is facing unfair expectations. After all, Pace is a 24-year-old linebacker who was an undrafted player. The mere fact that he’s a starter means he has already smashed expectations, so there does need to be a sense of the recent history before being too critical. Does that word of caution fully neutralize concern or can Pace be held to a higher standard?
Ivan Pace & The Possibility of Demotion
In football, there are times when you have to tip the cap. Such is the case when battling Bijan Robinson.
The Falcons’ top runner had a wonderful game on Sunday Night Football. Powerful and elusive, Robinson finished his night having turned 22 carries into 143 scoreless rushing yards. The 6.5 yards-per-carry average is sizzling stuff, the kind of elite number that probably led to Brian Flores losing some sleep. How much of the Robinson brilliance fed into the Ivan Pace struggles?
Something that should be obvious at this stage is that Mr. Pace does his best work when he’s allowed to come forward.
Essentially, Pace is a run stuffer and a great blitzer. There are times when he doesn’t look excellent in pass coverage; the wisest decision is therefore to lean into his strengths, something that Coach Flores appears very keen to do. As a rookie, Pace blitzed 74 times; the number was down at 44 blitzes while Pace was a sophomore, but the games played dropped from a full seventeen to eleven.
So far, Ivan Pace is up to 9 blitzes in 2025. Again, come back to Coaching 101. Learn what your players do well and then allow those players to do those things (while still pushing the guys to improve areas of weakness). Flores is doing so with Pace.
The problem is simply that Ivan Pace is now missing tackles. Ask PFF and the site will say that Pace missed 1 tackle in Week 1 and then 5 in Week 2. The simple math insists that it’s a half dozen missed tackles across two games, an unsustainably high number. No linebacker can expect to stay on the field with three missed tackles per game.
For whatever it’s worth, there’s evidently some subjectivity when assessing whether a tackle has been missed, similar to judging whether an infielder committed an error when failing to cleanly snag a ground ball.
Case in point: Pro Football Reference puts Pace’s missed tackles down at 5. The issue there is merely that the same spot insists that Pace only missed 7 tackles as a rookie and then 8 tackles as a sophomore. Through just a pair of games, Pace is already sitting on 5.
Where does that leave Ivan Pace going forward?
At the very least, Pace is a starter until Blake Cashman comes back. The only other linebackers being holstered on the active roster are rookies Kobe King and Austin Keys, neither of whom should be expected to start so early. There could be a turn to practice squad linebacker Sione Takitaki, but that’s likely only to occur to enhance the depth rather than to find a new starter.
In other words, Pace has some runway ahead of him. He’ll partner with Wilson — someone sitting on 4 missed tackles, per PFF — in the coming weeks. Who gets to stick around beside Blake Cashman remains to be seen, though Pace should be considered the favorite as a complementary piece alongside the LB1.
Even if Ivan Pace turns things around — very good chance he does given his level of play in 2023 and 2024 — the linebacker’s future with the Vikings remains a question.
Carrying a puny $1,036,668 cap charge, Mr. Pace is soon to get a major raise no matter how the rest of the year unfolds. He’ll be looking to correct the missed tackle issue so that he can both secure a large payday in the spring of 2026 while helping his Vikings to shine in 2025.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference, PFF, and Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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