The NFL season won’t kick back up for a while, but the noise around the league is growing by the day. For the Minnesota Vikings, the team is coming up on an important 2025-26 season and one that will feature the debut of quarterback J.J. McCarthy, who was out for the entire season last year.
While McCarthy is all the talk in the league right now, there’s more going on. The Vikings have quietly been putting together a tough roster for their 2025-26 run, both keeping key players and adding new ones to the mix. They had a strong record in 2024-25, with 14 games won and three lost, and now they have to get over that final hump.
Now, one Vikings player is getting attention. The team signed cornerback Isaiah Rodgers back in March, and that may turn out to be one of their best moves, even if it’s not getting much talk right now.
Vikings May Have a Top Cornerback
Rodgers was suspended for the full 2023-24 season with the Indianapolis Colts because he violated the NFL’s gambling policy. That’s not cool, but hopefully he learned his lesson. Missing an entire season is no joke.
Last season, Rodgers was with the Philadelphia Eagles, and he was a top-25 cornerback in the NFL according to his PFF grade of 73.2. He also had solid numbers on run defense grade (83.4) and coverage grade (70.5).
In a piece published on Tuesday, July 15, Brad Berreman of The Viking Age lays out why Rodgers could be the secret sauce for the Vikings.
“Much like Vikings fans should trust O’Connell when it comes to quarterbacks (i.e., J.J. McCarthy has what it takes), there has to be trust that Flores knows what he’s looking for in defensive players (position-specific, of course),” he states.
Berreman adds, “If he pounded the table for Rodgers as a starting-caliber cornerback, that’s plenty good enough until it’s confirmed or disproved on the field.”
More Praise for Rising Vikings Star
He’s not alone. In a piece published Monday, July 15, in The Athletic, Vikings’ beat writer Alec Lewis discusses the team’s breakout candidate for 2025, and it’s Rodgers.
“It’s not that Rodgers is a complete unknown,” he states in the piece. “He snatched three interceptions for the Colts in 2021, then started nine games the following season. If it weren’t for a gambling suspension that sidelined him during the 2023 season, who knows where he’d rank among cornerbacks?”
Lewis adds, “Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores and the personnel department targeted him, specifically. They believed pairing him with Byron Murphy — in a defense that allows cornerbacks to play make — will allow Rodgers to thrive. He impressed throughout the spring and is in line for major opportunities.”
Following the first day of the Vikings’ minicamp in June, Flores also talked about Rodgers, stating, “Isaiah’s been on my radar since he was at UMass. [A] fast playmaker, [I] think he’s one of these kind of late-round guys who found his way in the league in the kicking game and got in some games and made some plays.”
So, watch out, because Rodgers might be what gets the Vikings over that hump. He could turn out to be the biggest surprise on the team’s roster.
