Check out all of Zone Coverage’s draft content, including the complete draft guide, Luke Inman’s winners and losers, a feature on first-round pick Jeff Gladney and more. View Sam Ekstrom’s other draft pick features below.
Ezra Cleveland Should Be a Clean Fit Into Vikings’ Offensive Plans
Vikings Trusting Tape Over Measurables With Cameron Dantzler
D.J. Wonnum is Andre Patterson’s Newest “Pet Cat”
Can James Lynch Contribute Immediately as an Inside Pass-Rusher?
When Troy Dye broke his thumb and sprained his knee as a senior at Oregon, he had many questions about his injuries. Should he play through them? How should he rehab?
Fortunately, Dye had a good resource. His mother Danna was an athletic trainer with a few pro tips.
“It’s given me a different outlook on things when you know the difference between being hurt and being injured,” Dye told Twin Cities reporters, “because you have had that your whole life, someone in your ear telling you, ‘OK you can play with this, you can’t do this, you can do this,’ so after a while you get to learn your body and maneuver it, what you can take and what you can’t take, what’s smart and what’s not smart.”
The Ducks’ star linebacker played with a club on his right hand for most of the season to protect his thumb. After helping Oregon win a Pac-12 championship and Rose Bowl game, he discovered that the tweak in his knee was a torn meniscus that he’d been playing through for his final four games. Yet Dye led Oregon in tackles for the fourth straight year while picking off two passes, forcing two fumbles and recording 2.5 sacks.
“If I can walk, if I can run, I can play,” Dye said. “I’m not going to sit on the bench and try to milk stuff. I love to play the game. I love football so much that I’ll give everything I have for it.”
Dye is one of several Vikings draft picks that battled through college injuries to perform at a high level. Minnesota is opting to view that as a positive instead of the dreaded injury-prone label.
First-round cornerback Jeff Gladney has a similar story. He, too, played through a torn meniscus as a senior, one year after gutting out an ankle injury as a junior. The sum of those two seasons turned him into a first-round prospect, a status that was cemented by Gladney’s sub-4.5 40-yard dash on an injured knee, which he called “all heart.” He’d been clocked in the low 4.3s in previous years.
“I have a very high pain tolerance,” said the 31st overall pick.
Gladney was one of college football’s most physical corners despite having an injury that would often affect a defensive back’s physicality. He specialized in press coverage and forced the second-most contested targets in the nation, per Pro Football Focus. That level of performance with a bum knee creates a tantalizing level of potential.
“I wanted to show everybody what I had before I had the surgery,” Gladney said.
Minnesota’s second highly-drafted corner, Cameron Dantzler, wasn’t able to push through his pain in the same way. He attributed a 4.64 40-yard dash to a quadriceps injury at the combine, though his virtual 40 was reportedly faster, according to general manager Rick Spielman.
“It gave us a pretty good indication,” Spielman said. “[He was] a little banged up and still tried to gut it through at the combine, but I know he plays faster than what his 40 time was at the combine.”
Second-round tackle Ezra Cleveland dealt with turf toe last year, a problematic injury for offensive tackles that are forced to stand their ground and repel charging defensive ends. Cleveland was hardly able to practice early in the season.
“I know our scouts had talked about how tough he was to get through that and some of the limitations he had during practice during the week, but lined up every Saturday to play,” Spielman said. “We went back and watched 2018 tape on him when he was healthier and there was a pretty good running back behind him, as well (Alexander Mattison).”
Cleveland still hung in for over 900 snaps last season and posted an 81.9 pass-blocking grade out of 100, per PFF.
“Everyone deals with injuries,” said college director Jamaal Stephenson, “and this is a tough guy who fought through it. I think he got better by season’s end.”
The Vikings are hopeful that fourth-round pick D.J. Wonnum can return to his pre-injury form. Wonnum was a rising prospect after his sophomore season where he posted six sacks, only to have his junior year largely wiped out due to an ankle injury. That preceded an underwhelming senior season.
“I feel like it didn’t even slow me down at all,” Wonnum said. “Right now, I feel great.”
Injury issues are always part of the equation when evaluating draft prospects, but those concerns can usually be alleviated by physicals and in-person workouts. Due to the pandemic that decreased in-person meetings and doctor appointments, the Vikings could only conduct “virtual doctor visits” with trainer Eric Sugarman.
Nonetheless, the Vikings are hopeful that their rookies’ ability to perform through (or recover from) injuries will only enhance, not hamper, their potentials.
