The Vikings’ Success Hinges On Two Undrafted Stars

When a team’s starting quarterback and running back both go down with season-ending injuries in the first half of a season, said team would be expected to prepare for a high pick in the draft and crumble into pieces in the meantime. But that’s not what’s happened in Minnesota this year. After limping to a 3-2 start on the season — a start that included rookie running back Dalvin Cook tearing his ACL and quarterback Sam Bradford playing in just two games before undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery — the Vikings’ season could have easily gone south. Instead, head coach Mike Zimmer challenged his offense to see who’d be the next man up. Five games later, it would appear that Zimmer got more than just one player to take him up on his challenge.

The offensive resurgence has been led by a pair of players who could easily not even be in the league: Quarterback Case Keenum and wide receiver Adam Thielen both entered the NFL as undrafted free agents. Since Week 6, the two have been among the top players at their positions and have helped Minnesota reel off five straight wins to improve to 8-2. Minnesota now holds a 90 percent chance of making the postseason, according to FiveThirtyEight’s NFL predictions.

Signed as a backup for Bradford to start the season, Keenum has the second-best total quarterback rating¹ in the league since Week 6 behind only Tom Brady. Keenum’s been so good that he kept Teddy Bridgewater, who’s looking to make his first regular-season start since the 2015 season, out of the starting lineup. As for Thielen, it’s been a rapid rise to the top for the Minnesota native, who was playing for Division II Minnesota State-Mankato just five years ago and only made it onto the Vikings by paying to attend two NFL combines before being invited to Minnesota’s rookie camp. Thielen now leads the league in receiving yards since Week 6 and has averaged more than 100 yards a game in that span. Together, the unlikely stars have connected for 739 yards in the nine games they’ve played together. This partial-season total is already the sixth most in the past 20 seasons by a duo of undrafted quarterback and undrafted wide receiver. Eastern Illinois’s Tony Romo and Monmouth University’s Miles Austin hold the record by this measure, when the undrafted pair connected for 1,320 yards for Dallas in 2009. Keenum and Thielen need to average 97 yards per game in their remaining six games to beat the record, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.