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Blake Cashman is playing absurdly well.
The homegrown Viking has been the ideal Green Dot linebacker under Defensive Coordinator Brian Flores since he signed with the team in 2024 free agency, but his performance dating to Week 7 last season when he returned from injury is beyond that.
It's been unbelievably good — and unrivaled across the league.
During that span of 18 games, Cashman is responsible for 195 tackles, 6.5 sacks and 13 quarterback hits. The No. 2 tackler is Detroit's Jack Campbell, with 174 in 17 games, and you must search outside the Top 25 tacklers to find another player with five or more sacks.
Moreover, Kaden Elliss (Falcons, Saints) and Cashman's running mate Eric Wilson are the only other players with 100-plus tackles — they both have 110 — and double-digit QB hits since Week 7 of 2025.
Cashman has made 18 consecutive appearances for the first time in his career, and it's paid off for him and Minnesota. While the 30-year-old has averaged 10.8 tackles in that stretch, the team has allowed 17.2 points per game. Through the first six in 2026, Cash' is averaging 9.0 tackles, and opponents are averaging 12.3 points. The success is intertwined.
And it was never more apparent than Sunday against Indianapolis when Cashman had an effort of epic proportions: 12 tackles, four passes defended, three QB hits and two sacks.
Those numbers and his ubiquitous impact in Minnesota's 16-10 victory earned him his first weekly All-Star nod from FOX Sports' Greg Auman. It could result in league honors, as well, making him a candidate for NFC Defensive Player of the Week (the winner will be announced Wednesday).
Auman noted that Cashman's "little-of-everything game, at the center of a defense-driven win" got him the nod over Alex Singleton, who had 19 tackles and a sack for the Broncos in their win over Arizona, and Kendal Daniels, who closed out Atlanta's upset of San Francisco with an interception of Brock Purdy in addition to nabbing 11 tackles and a fumble recovery.
Cashman is the most recent Viking to garner All-Star recognition, following Justin Jefferson and Andrew Van Ginkel in Week 1, Dallas Turner in Week 2, Myles Price in Week 3 and T.J. Hockenson and Turner in Week 4. Check out Auman's full All-Star lineup for Week 7 below.
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QB: Joe Burrow (Bengals)
RB: Tony Pollard (Titans); Bucky Irving (Buccaneers)
WR: Jaxon Smith-Njigba (Seahawks); Tee Higgins (Bengals)
TE: Colston Loveland (Bears)
OL: Tampa Bay
EDGE: YaYa Diaby (Buccaneers)
DT: Adetomiwa Adebawore (Colts)
LB: Blake Cashman (Vikings)
DB: Jessie Bates III (Falcons)
ST: Tykee Smith and Zyon McCollum (Buccaneers)
A measuring stick against historically great defenses
Bill Barnwell of ESPN wrote on Monday that we're a few weeks away from discussing Minnesota's defense as one of the greatest units of the past 20 seasons with confidence.
That determination will be merited in Barnwell's eyes if the Vikings do to their next four foes — Detroit, Buffalo, San Francisco and Green Bay — what they did to their first six.
Barnwell introduced several statistics to make his argument for the Purple's dominance.
First, Minnesota is allowing 1.1 points per possession. The only other club giving up fewer than 1.7 is Seattle; the reigning Super Bowl Champion Seahawks are allowing 1.4 per drive.
The Vikings suffocation of offenses has been unrelenting since the Packers scored two touchdowns in the first 30 minutes of the season opener. Crazy, but true: Teams have scored four offensive touchdowns on the Vikings over the past five-and-a-half contests.
Barnwell wondered, "Is that historically great?"
He noted it depends on where you set your cutoffs because defenses at the turn of the century were "playing in a different era of football with more liberal defensive rules against offenses that played more conservative styles and at slower paces." Accordingly, he chose 2007 as an appropriate starting place thanks to New England's offensive revolution then.
Barnwell shared that across that timeframe — looking strictly at a team's initial six games — the Vikings are the 10th-best defense of the past 20 seasons. He pointed out that the No. 1 unit by a wide margin through the first six games of those seasons was the 2019 Patriots.
Vikings outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy was part of that group, which allowed 0.4 points per possession. Van Noy brought up that defense after Sunday's win to deter these types of conversations; he said it's too early in the season to make conclusions about the greatness of this defense — and said he still has nightmares about the 2019 Pats abrupt playoff exit.
Here's an excerpt from Barnwell's deep dive on the Vikings defense:
What makes the Vikings such a particularly devastating unit is how the blitz and the threat of the blitz force offenses to react. While the Vikings are a dominant defense when they send extra pressure, they're an even more impressive pass defense when they don't send extra players after the quarterback. They allow just 3.6 yards per attempt and 2.8 yards per dropback when they rush four or fewer, both of which are the best marks for any defense through six games in the QBR era, which dates back to 2007. That's a direct product of shell-shocked offenses overloading their pass protection to account for Flores' blitzes, only to then see a limited number of eligible receivers flooded by seven or eight defenders dropping into coverage.