Former Vikings Defender Apologizes
In the final year of Mike Zimmer’s Vikings tenure, the entire organization was in a chaotic phase with a head coach who was not talking to the general manager and the infamous culture of fear was taking over in the locker room.
One part of the locker room was cornerback Cam Dantzler, who first starred under Zimmer and then saw his career hit some major roadblocks.
Fast forward half a decade, and Zimmer has presumably retired, while Dantzler is fighting to keep his career alive, playing for the Louisville Kings in the UFL, hoping for another shot in the NFL. Last weekend, Dantzler was bounced from a game for punching an opponent.
He then — sort of — apologized on social media, posting: “I apologize for what I did but I don’t apologize for standing up for my brother. I could’ve been a professional and handled it a different way , so kings nation I am truly sorry !!”
You be the judge whether that actually counts as an apology or not.
Punches are outlawed in football and lead to automatic ejections. One thing is clear: if an NFL executive or scout studies the spring league to find a hidden gem (the Vikings found Jalen Redmond that way), and a player is throwing punches, that’s likely not increasing his chances to be added to the 90-man offseason roster.
UFL players are long shots to have staying power in the NFL; that’s why they landed in the UFL. And no team wants a long shot on the roster that could potentially turn into a headache. It’s perhaps an unfair truth, but a star player might be allowed to cross some lines and bring red flags to the table, but bottom-of-the-roster players have to entirely avoid anything of that sort.
Dantzler was a talented player coming out and showed enormous promise in his debut season, but he couldn’t stay around for the entirety of his rookie deal.
Desperate for cornerback help, then-GM Rick Spielman pulled the trigger in the third round of the 2020 draft, adding the long DB to the young cornerback room.
After his promising rookie season, folks thought Dantzler might be a future standout defender for the club. The Vikings then signed Patrick Peterson in free agency and later added Bashaud Breeland. The question was whether the latter was just depth or a potential threat for Dantzler? Shockingly, when Week 1 arrived, Dantzler was inactive and used social media to voice his displeasure, which, of course, didn’t help his case to get out of Zimmer’s doghouse.
Dantzler still played 14 games and started seven of them, but he was clearly not Zimmer’s top choice. He only logged extensive snaps when Peterson was hurt or after Breeland was cut. Ed Donatell arrived in 2022, and fans hoped Dantzler would emerge. He did not, playing in ten games and starting nine, because rookies Andrew Booth Jr. and Akayleb Evans struggled to stay on the field due to injuries. Later in the year, he was inactive multiple times.
His stint with the franchise ended when the Vikings eventually moved on in the 2023 offseason. Since then, Dantzler has tried to find a new home, but most of his stops were quite short-lived. He did play a couple of games with the Saints in 2023, logging a whopping nine snaps on special teams. He’s also been with the Commanders, Bills, Texans, and Dolphins in the NFL, as well as the San Antonio Brahmas, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Memphis Showboats, and Louisville Kings (his current team) in other leagues.
At 27, it can’t be ruled out that he’ll get a training camp invite from some NFL team in a couple of months, but getting ejected didn’t help his case.
Editor’s Note: Information from PFF, Over The Cap, and Sports Reference helped with this article.
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