It was a certain bet that the Vikings were going to add to the running back room in the 2025 offseason, but most predicted them to do so via the 2025 NFL Draft. Jordan Mason was lightly rumored as an option to come to Minneapolis via trade, and that was the path that the Vikings decided to head down.
Minnesota sent a pick swap in this year’s draft and a sixth-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft to the San Francisco 49ers for Jordan Mason. In 2024, Jordan Mason ran for 789 yards on 153 carriers, an impressive average of 5.2 yards per carry. That average was the 6th best in the NFL among qualifying running backs in 2024. He also ran in 3 touchdowns.
The most impressive feature of Jordan Mason’s game is exactly what the Vikings have been missing since Adrian Peterson jumped ship to New Orleans in 2017: physicality.
Since Peterson, the bulk of the Vikings’ running backs have been what most would call “elusive backs,” or ball-carriers that specialize in eluding defenders with their speed or ball-carrier moves such as spins, cuts, and full-on jukes. The most “physical” backs in that time frame were Latavius Murray and Alexander Mattison, two guys not exactly known for even being overly physical.
Well, it seems as if the Philadelphia Eagles have put elite running backs being true game-winners back on the NFL map, and Minnesota has taken a look at their formula and has looked to mimic it in a Kwesi Adofo-Mensah “Moneyball” fashion with the trade for Jordan Mason and the signing of two big maulers on the offensive line in Ryan Kelly and Will Fries.
Jordan Mason isn’t a conventional “power back,” but he does up the ante in terms of physicality in the Vikings running back room. Per NFL Pro’s Next Gen Stats, Mason led the NFL in Forced Missed Tackle Rate at 37.1%, meaning one out of every three tackle attempts on him was met with denial. Mason also led the NFL in Weeks 1-8 (while Christian McCaffery was out) in total broken tackles with 51.
Furthermore, Mason brings a legitimate rushing threat against stacked boxes. Per NFL Pro, Jordan Mason faced stacked boxes on 33.3% of his rushing attempts, the most frequent rate in the NFL in 2024, and .01% more than Derrick Henry at 33.2%.
As the Vikings’ most frequent rusher last season, Aaron Jones saw stacked boxes only 18.4% of the time – the 26th most frequent in the NFL in 2024. This is huge because Mason’s numbers would’ve been even more impressive if he wasn’t facing stacked boxes all the time, and he will see less in Minnesota, considering opposing defenses have all of the Vikings’ other threats to worry about downfield.
One of the things Jones and Mason shared in common in 2024 on their respective teams was the frequency of their rushing attempts from under-center offensive formations. A whopping 82.7% of Jones’ rushing attempts came when the QB began the snap under-center, which led the league. Jordan Mason took rushes from under-center formations 73.9% of the time, 5th in the league.
Jones and Mason could be the thunder and lightning committee that the Vikings have been searching for at running back for the entirety of the Kevin O’Connell era. They’re very similar running backs in many different metrics, but Jordan Mason brings that little bit of “punch” that makes defenders think twice before engaging.
