Can Dallas Turner Take Up The Mantle?

In March of 2014, the Vikings had to let Jared Allen go.

In the midst of a messy 2013 season, Allen made it clear he was looking to contend. He did not want to stay with a Vikings team that was about to hire a new head coach and enter a full scale rebuild.

In addition, Allen had never been a true free agent, instead having been subject to tags, tenders and trades. He wanted to play the market. There wasn’t much the Vikings could do, outside of convincing Jared Allen that they’d instantly contend with a new coaching staff and a rookie quarterback to be named later.

So, Jared Allen walked. Behind him was a relatively unheralded Everson Griffen, playing well but buried on the disastrous Alan Williams defense. That March, the Vikings signed him to a five-year megadeal.

The rest is history. Griffen went on to be a four-time Pro Bowler, All Pro, and mainstay of the Vikings organization. Next to him for many years was Brian Robison, no slouch in his own right. 

In the Vikings’ 2017 NFC Championship run, Griffen totaled a career high 13 sacks while Robison rotated with a young upstart in his third season, Danielle Hunter. 2017 was Hunter’s breakout year, earning 9 sacks and an extension of his own the following offseason despite two quiet years to start his career.

_{Advertisement Below}

Over 4 million people have had the same lightbulb moment.

Morning Brew is a free daily newsletter that breaks down what's happening in business, finance, and tech — clearly, quickly, and with enough personality to make it the best email in your inbox.

No yelling. No filler. Just the news, finally making sense.

Try it for free

^{Advertisement Above}

Back in the 1970s, Matt Blair and Fred McNeill waited in the wings while the Purple People Eaters devoured quarterbacks. In 1976, 3rd year Matt Blair took over for the retiring Roy Winston, and eventually became a primary pass rusher in place of Carl Eller. Fred McNeill followed a similar path as the Vikings transitioned to a 3-4 in the 1980s.

Any lifetime football fan has seen this story play out. A young player joins, waits in the wings, then takes over when the starter steps aside. Now, that young player is Dallas Turner.

Turner spent the first two years of his career buried behind Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel. In the five games where both Greenard and Van Ginkel were fully healthy, Turner averaged 26.8 defensive snaps (41.7%). In games with at least one of the starters on the injury report, Turner averaged 47.3 snaps (75.5%)

In his rookie season, Turner was so buried that Brian Flores had to try to explain it away:

After Rob Brzezinski traded Jonathan Greenard to Philadelphia on draft weekend, he admitted he wasn’t “jumping around excitedly” about losing his best defensive player for two 3rd round picks. Brzezinski appealed to the Vikings’ financial situation, presenting the deal as a value proposition the Vikings were priced into.

It’s worth mentioning that fellow Wide Leftist Matt Fries had very little trouble keeping Greenard on the roster, resetting the cap, and keeping flexibility for the future. An extension similar to what Philadelphia gave Greenard would have fit snugly into Fries’ plan.

The key difference is that Fries relied on several contract restructures, which require cash spending. Brzezinski insisted that cash spending wasn’t a limitation, nor was limiting cash spending a motivation, but that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

The most charitable conclusion I can come up with is that the Vikings felt Greenard would not be worth the money he was asking for. But even that does not try to sell some Dallas Turner improvement as a motivating factor. 

Turner did not get a mention in Brzezinski’s defense of the deal.

By at least omission, the Vikings acknowledge that they have gotten worse on the whole by moving from Greenard to Turner, and are asking us to forgive them because of the liquid assets it provided.

For what it’s worth to you, Greenard emphatically believes in Turner, comparing his situation to Will Anderson’s, who took over for Greenard in Houston.

Should we believe Greenard? Can Dallas Turner make the Vikings his team? 

Greenard is right about one thing: this was his team for the last two years. 

Greenard leads the team in pressures by a mile, but it’s worth noting that he also rushed the passer much more than anyone else. That’s because he never came off the field like Turner did, but also because he is the focal point of the Vikings’ pass rush strategy.

Dallas Turner posted a respectable 42 pressures in 2025, but Greenard still outproduced him, despite missing five games with a shoulder injury and playing injured for more. 

Turner will need to become a more productive rusher than he was last year in order to fill Greenard’s shoes. To understand how that can happen, we need to understand pass rushes better in general.

In the NFL, pass rushes aren’t simply a series of one-on-one matchups. You’re not regularly telling players to pin their ears back and win. Defenses want to exploit mismatches and manage the quarterback’s escape lanes.

Below is a screenshot from an old Fangio playbook from his days in Chicago. This was Chicago’s base defensive system. It’s not what the Vikings are running under Flores, but it serves as an adequate example to learn the collective basics.

Highlighting the important parts in orange and blue, you can think of the Rip/Liz as a strong side/weak side identifier. “Rip” identifies the right side as the strong side, “Liz” identifies the left.

So if you are “to Rip/Liz” that just means you are on the side with more passing threats. A back end defender — the “green dot,” if you will — relays this as part of the play call.

Note that the strongside end (think Jalen Redmond for the current Vikings) must take an inside rush lane. The nose must rush away from the strength. The weak side end and the 4th rushing outside linebacker both have contain responsibilities.