After ranking near the bottom of the league in most special teams categories last season, the Minnesota Vikings needed some upgrades for 2025. While it’s too early to tell how this year’s unit will fare compared to last season’s, it’s not too soon to see that Kevin O’Connell and Co. have already made some interesting decisions regarding the group.
There are several oddities with this special teams group, but the most recent news might be the most intriguing. In Minnesota’s latest depth chart ahead of the Monday night matchup against Chicago, rookie Myles Price is now listed as the starting punt and kick returner. The Vikings initially listed the undrafted receiver out of Indiana as the starting punt returner in the previous depth chart, but he has seemingly claimed both jobs.
It’s a particularly thought-provoking development considering last year’s kick returner, Ty Chandler, is still on the roster. He was fairly unproductive in that role in 2024 with a pedestrian 25.6 yards per return, but still figured to be given priority for the job entering the summer. Chandler is now also buried in a deep running back room, so it’s hard to see how, if at all, he fits into the 2025 Vikings. Fellow rookie Tai Felton has also struggled to crack the receiver rotation despite one receiver’s suspension and another carrying an AARP card. He couldn’t snag the return job, either.
Minnesota was last in the league in punt return average in 2024 with just 6.8 yards per return. On the one hand, the Vikings can only go up from there, but did they do enough to make a difference?
Former returner Brandon Powell is no longer on the roster, so they’d need a new replacement. Rondale Moore‘s injury in the first preseason game made the problem even more complicated. Interestingly, the Vikings list Adam Thielen, who hasn’t returned a punt in nearly a decade, as the No. 2 punt returner. For both return jobs, we can only hope that Price just blew the return competition out of the water, and this isn’t some sort of “Best Of the Worst” scenario.
The Vikings have very rarely employed one player as both the starting punt and kick returner. Price hasn’t returned kicks since his freshman year at Texas Tech, but special teams coordinator Matt Daniels still seems to think that Price is a perfect fit to handle the rare dual role.
“I feel really confident in Myles being that dual returner,” said Daniels. “He didn’t do too much kick returning in college, he was more of a punt returner. But he has that running back feel to him, and really a running back build to him, and kind of a sneaky tackle breaker. So you feel good about him being back there as a kick returner as well.”
So, as the Vikings enter the season with some big questions surrounding the return game, they also have another one to answer at punter. Despite declining year after year on his way to becoming one of the more mediocre punters in the NFL, Minnesota is running it back with Ryan Wright. His net average has worsened each year, most recently dropping to 40.6 yards, which ranks 24th in the NFL as of 2024. So while the Vikings absolutely should have replaced him with rookie Oscar Chapman this year, they didn’t due to one particular skill.
As the preseason went on, it became clear that Wright would win the job, not for his punting ability, but for his skill and reliability as a holder. Chapman, the Australian rookie, looked to be the stronger punter much of the summer. Still, his struggles holding for kicker Will Reichard held him back. During his limited action in the preseason, Chapman’s net average exceeded Wright’s by over 10 yards. But it’s obvious that the Vikings, and everyone else with a brain, will give up a few yards in the punt game here and there to avoid shanked field goals all season long.
Chapman is still a member of the practice squad, though. If Wright continues to struggle, it wouldn’t be out of the question for the Vikings to make a change. Still, it’s frustrating to know the Vikings will start the season with a bottom-tier punter.
The Vikings have Super Bowl aspirations in 2025, but outside of Reichard, they don’t exactly exude confidence on special teams. Moore would have been a nice player to slot in at returner, but after his injury, there wasn’t an obvious answer to fill the void. Myles Price could impress and become the next Marvin Mims or Keisean Nixon, and maybe Wright has a bounce-back year, but there are still a lot of reasons to think that Minnesota didn’t improve this group enough.