Going into the game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings running back room was in an interesting place. They had just traded for Cam Akers and Alexander Mattison has been up and down with his performances.
After Sunday’s win, Kevin O’Connell was asked about his running back room and he is happy with it right now.
I think they really did and Cam has done a great job of coming in and absorbing it. I still have a lot of strong feelings for Ty Chandler as a nice change-of-pace as well. I feel really good about the running back room. I really do. But with Alex Mattison, you can feel that he seems to just get stronger and stronger with each carry and then to have Cam come in and keep both of those guys fresh. It’s kind of how I envisioned it and we maybe sprinkle in Ty a little bit of that 4.37 speed as well. So, we’ve got a lot of versatility in the running back room and with the tight ends and how we can get big with people. The way that Josh (Oliver) and TJ (Hockenson) block on the edges paired with the running back. There’s been a lot of immediate improvement in how we’re running the football to the way that those combinations are working. We’re getting dents in the front and taking double teams and people to the second level. They played a lot of five down against us to try and discourage some of the runs that we hit last week against the Chargers so we adjusted a little bit and we were still able to get some quality running game going today.”
Mattison had the most touches on Sunday with 18 touches and Akers had seven. Chandler only returned the ball for the Vikings, something he did two times for 55 yards.
Moving forward, it will be intriguing to see how this room shapes out, but it’s hard to see Mattison losing his spot at the top of the depth chart barring injury.
