Vikings’ DC ‘really excited’ to have DT Sheldon Richardson

The Minnesota Vikings have a formidable pair of defensive ends in Everson Griffen and Danielle Hunter.

As such, they draw a good deal of double-team blocks, which creates some opportunities inside against single blockers.

‘He’s disruptive in the run game for sure and he’s also disruptive against the pass’

This offseason, the Vikings set out to not only take better advantage of those single-blocking matchups in the middle but also try to pull some of the additional blockers away from Griffen and Hunter. That was the thinking behind signing free-agent defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson, who was with the Seattle Seahawks last year after spending his first four seasons in the NFL with the New York Jets.

“We’re really excited with his skill set, adding it to our group, because he’s disruptive in the run game for sure and he’s also disruptive against the pass,” Vikings defensive coordinator George Edwards told Alex Marvez and Bill Polian on Late Hits. “Hopefully, we can get him in some one-on-one situations with the personnel that we have. A lot of times, we’re starting to face where they’re concerned about our defensive ends Everson Griffen and Danielle Hunter, where they’ll double them a lot of times, and they’ll end up singling us inside sometimes. So we want to, hopefully with his skill set, be able to take advantage of teams that want to try to do that and, hopefully, pull some of those double teams off our ends in critical situations like third down and those types of deals.”

‘He’s been a good fit for us this offseason’

Edwards has been impressed with what Richardson showed during offseason workouts, especially when it came to absorbing the Vikings’ defense.

“He’s done a tremendous job this offseason of picking up, schematically, what we’re trying to do — the verbiage that we use, the techniques and the fundamentals that we use — and he’s been a good fit for us this offseason,” the coach said. “We’re excited about him going into training camp and continuing to work as we press forward to start the season.”