For most of his NFL career, Ryan Kelly’s current offseason would have surprised the former Alabama All-American. After playing nine seasons with the Indianapolis Colts, the four-time Pro Bowl center signed with the Minnesota Vikings this month as a free agent.
“To be honest, I always thought I’d play my whole career in one place,” Kelly said. “You know, last couple years kind of changed a little bit in that perspective. So very excited to be a Viking.”
A first-round draft choice from the Crimson Tide’s 2015 CFP national-championship team, Kelly couldn’t put his finger on the moment he fell out of Indianapolis’ plans, but he came to terms with it.
“I felt like I was OK,” Kelly said. “It’s time for me to maybe check out what else is out there and move on and have a new perspective in this career. And so, yeah, I can’t say there’s a specific event. It was just like, I’ll miss the guys in the O-line room and I’ll miss a bunch of people there, but in my heart, I just knew it was time to move on. And I kind of felt that way the last like year and a half.”
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Kelly joined the Vikings for a two-year, $18 million contract.
“As I started looking at it, like, Minnesota was the most appealing place,” Kelly said. “And I think I can probably go into super depth in this answer, but even in the AFC South, watching some of the NFC North teams, like you watch different offensive lines throughout the year, and I think you can watch a team and how they play, their head coach, who they play for. Obviously the NFLPA report card comes out every single year and they’re always No. 1 or No. 2. So all those things kind of go into it. And I saw from afar, more descriptively, it was just how well the offensive line played together. You could tell that that team really relies on the offensive line and they’re a true Band of Brothers mentality. And that’s what I was looking for. So I think when you couple all those things together, that’s ultimately what pushed me over the edge to go to Minnesota.”
Sam Darnold played quarterback for the Vikings as they posted a 14-3 regular-season record in 2024. Darnold departed for the Seattle Seahawks in free agency, leaving Minnesota with J.J. McCarthy at the top of its quarterback depth chart. McCarthy joined the Vikings as the 10th pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, but he missed his rookie season because of a knee injury.
Kelly plans to give McCarthy the benefit of his experience.
“For the last nine years, for the most part, I’ve been in charge of the run game and the pass game and all the blitz lookups and all those,” Kelly said. “And so I think that is what I bring to this table is: OK, there’s a young guy who we really believe in, who we know has the fire and the passion to be great. He just might not be able to see everything right away. So it’s helping him, helping the offensive line and leading the offensive line to run the ball, to pass protect the way that we can to score points in this league. That’s how you do it.”
Among the NFL’s 32 teams in 2024, Minnesota scored the ninth-most points and yielded the fifth-fewest.
“There’s amazing talent in the Minnesota Vikings on both sides,” Kelly said. “It’s just a fact. We played that defense last year. Not a whole lot of fun. (Defensive coordinator) Brian Flores will dial up on you with the best of them. So then you look at the offense, with the guys there already, have the additions, it’s exciting, man. And it’s exciting because you need those guys in certain positions to make impact plays.
“The offensive line, we’re going to handle what we can handle. Right? We’ll do everything we can to be successful. Sometimes you just need guys to get open and to make plays and you need the runners to run and see the zones and to see the lanes. And so it’s going to be very exciting to get into April and just to start building the team. That’s when you build a team is April, May, and you roll into training camp with that crew and you start to see what you can become. But it starts off the field. And, obviously, the talent is going to be there, so it’s just exciting.”
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at@AMarkG1.