Minnesota Vikings linebacker Blake Cashman left Monday night’s game against the Chicago Bears with a hamstring injury that is likely going to impact the team well into the season.
Cashman put together a strong performance throughout the Vikings’ 27-24 comeback win in Chicago on September 8, tallying three tackles and a pressure through three quarters.
However, he was sidelined for the fourth quarter after sustaining a non-contact hamstring injury from chasing Caleb Williams.
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On Tuesday, September 9, the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Ben Goessling reported that Cashman will undergo a MRI and is expected to miss “several weeks.”
Goessling said he agrees with a fan who speculatively wrote, “wouldn’t surprise me at all if Blake was out till after bye in week 6.”
It’s wise for the Vikings to use the luxury of a bye week to give Cashman more time to recover, but if that’s the case, Cashman could be a candidate to land on the injured reserve list to create an extra roster spot.
It’s an unfortunate blow, just one game into the season, for Brian Flores’ defense, which was dramatically different without Cashman for three games last year.
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Vikings’ First 2 Losses Last Season Came With Cashman Out
Last season, the Vikings jumped out to a 5-0 start on the efforts of Sam Darnold and a revamped Vikings defense that welcomed Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel and Cashman to the starting lineup.
As an inside linebacker, Cashman has the impossible task of covering the middle of the field that Flores sacrifices to create pressure with his scheme. Few linebackers have the speed and instinct to cover it fully, but Cashman handled the job with poise a season ago.
He tallied a career-high 112 combined tackles, 28 pressures, 4.5 sacks, eight tackles for loss and eight passes defensed while missing three games with a turf toe injury he sustained in Week 5.
In the following two games, the Vikings defense allowed nearly 400 total yards of offense in their first losses to the Los Angeles Rams and Detroit Lions. Cashman’s absence was evident. Savvy play-callers like Sean McVay and Ben Johnson continued to pull the right levers to open up receivers in the middle of the field.
On Monday against the Bears, backup Eric Wilson stepped up in Cashman’s place. Wilson tallied five combined tackles, a tackle for loss and deflected a punt that was tantamount to the Vikings’ comeback — all while handling the cognitive load of communicating the defensive play call from Flores.
An undrafted rookie free agent of the Vikings’ in 2017, Wilson returned to Minnesota this offseason after five seasons elsewhere in the NFL.
He will surely be leaned on while Cashman is on the mend.
Blake Cashman’s Injury History is Becoming a Concern for Vikings
A native of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Cashman signing a three-year, $22.5 million contract with the Vikings in March 2024 was a welcome homecoming.
However, the durability concerns that plagued Cashman early in his career are continuing to show up in Minnesota.
A fifth-round pick by the New York Jets in 2019, Cashman played in just 14 games in his first three seasons, landing on injured reserve four times before a fresh start with the Houston Texans.
Cashman has had a much cleaner bill of health since then, playing 44 games the past three seasons.
