The Sports Xchange

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — Where the Minnesota Vikings are coming out of June and heading toward a season of heightened expectations can be summed up in the six words spoken by starting quarterback Teddy Bridgewater as minicamp opened this week.

“We’re glad to have ’28’ back,” said Bridgewater in a nod to the jersey number of six-time Pro Bowl running back and 2012 NFL MVP Adrian Peterson. “Everyone knows what he brings to the table, what he brings to this game. His presence is always felt.”

Peterson, who expressed similar feelings for Bridgewater two weeks earlier, has yet to play even a preseason snap with the Vikings’ promising second-year quarterback. Peterson was rested during the 2014 preseason and Bridgewater wasn’t a starter yet when Peterson’s season came to an end amid an indictment on child abuse charges days after the season opener.

The notion of the two of them uniting to diversify the offense and relieve pressure on a young and blossoming defense has the team and its fan base expecting a playoff appearance and longing for only the second playoff victory – and more — since Peterson joined the team in 2007.

Peterson helped make this possible earlier than expected when he buried months of bitterness and showed up for two weeks of voluntary OTAs and the mandatory minicamp. Although he’s still pushing behind the scenes for more guaranteed money in the final three years of his contract, his return to Winter Park shifted the focus around him to the football field after months of being one of the tarnished faces of the league’s domestic abuse problem.

He is in tip-top physical shape and indications are his emotional state returned to normal. After months in which he and his agent, Ben Dogra, expressed reservations about the team and a desire to play elsewhere, Peterson calmed the waters with a June 2 press conference in which he said he doesn’t want to be anywhere but Minnesota. And it sounded believable to boot.

Once he hit the field, even without pads, the Vikings were reminded why they steadfastly refused to trade or release a 30-year-old running back due to make $12.75 million this season.

“He doesn’t look like he’s missed a day,” said offensive coordinator Norv Turner, who will get to work with a Hall of Fame-bound running back, a more mature quarterback, a healthy tight end in Kyle Rudolph and a new deep threat in Mike Wallace.

“There’s no prettier sight than Adrian with the ball in his hands,” added coach Mike Zimmer, a noted defensive mind who knows the difficulty of defending vertically when there’s a great running back to account for.

Offensively, the biggest question mark now is the line. Left tackle Matt Kalil was terrible last season, while right tackle Phil Loadholt is coming off pectoral surgery that ended his season last November. Guard Brandon Fusco missed the last 13 games with the same injury and is dealing with a move to left guard from right guard. And right guard is, well, very much up in the air between rookies T.J. Clemmings and Tyrus Thompson, unproven second-year pro David Yankey and safe, fallback option Joe Berger, the 33-year-old interior utility man.

As for assessing the offensive line as of mid-June, well, that’s not so easy, according to Zimmer.

“It’s so difficult, I mean, it’s so difficult without the pads on to really know, because we’re taking care of each other up front,” he said, referring to the lack of contact. “We’re not trying to do anything, so the evaluation part is just difficult for me at this point in time. I mean, you can see balance and body movement and things like that. I feel good about a lot of those things, but the tenacity and the physicalness and those things, we’re going to have to wait until we get to camp.”

The progress or lack thereof with receiver Cordarrelle Patterson also will be very much a topic of daily discussion in training camp. The 2013 first-round pick – who cost the Vikings four picks to move up for – was raw offensively when he earned All-Pro first-team honors as a return man in 2013. Last year, he took a step back, got benched and was told publicly in not-so-subtle terms that he needed to take the nuances of his job more seriously.

Coaches say he did that that, but Patterson still was not above second team during OTAs and minicamp. Nor was he inserted when the team went to three-receiver sets.

Turner, however, cautions against writing Patterson off.

“He’s in the mix. In my mind, he’s in the mix,” Turner said. “I told our guys that when we start our games I hope we have 16 starters. You can only put 11 on the field at a time. But if we can get to where we are playing multiple people and giving defenses different looks and we have a lot of people contributing, it makes us much harder to defend.”

Defensively, the Vikings have a chance to build upon a dramatic improvement that saw them leap from last in scoring defense in Leslie Frazier’s last season to 11th in Year 1 under Zimmer.

Second-round draft pick Eric Kendricks has displayed the speed and instinctiveness to warrant the starting middle linebacker job immediately. He’s also expected to push 32-year-old veteran linebacker Chad Greenway for most if not all the reps as the second linebacker in the nickel.

Meanwhile, the team took things much more slowly during OTAs and minicamp with first-round draft pick Trae Waynes. Although Waynes is expected to start opposite Xavier Rhodes, the rookie spent the early portion of the offseason being taught and tested at the unfamiliar nickel slot position with the second unit.

If Kendricks and Waynes step up as expected and linebacker Anthony Barr picks up where he left off after a late-season knee injury cut his rookie season short, Zimmer’s defense could be special. And young. Eight of the 11 starters would be preferred core building blocks between the ages of 22 and 27.

Five of those players would be former or current first-round draft picks. Three of them — Waynes, Rhodes and free safety Harrison Smith – are in the secondary, while Barr and defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd are in the front seven. Greenway, the No. 1 pick in 2006, would give the Vikings six total first-rounders among their starting 11.

The hope, of course, is for those players not to see the field quite as much as they did a year ago when the Vikings went 7-9 and were the only team in the league not to beat a team with a winning record. For that to happen, Bridgewater and Peterson are going to have to supply the powerful 1-2 punch that Turner envisioned when the team drafted Bridgewater 32nd overall last year.

Asked about the possibilities of playing together, Bridgewater smiled.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m looking forward to it.”