Vikings center Garrett Bradbury (back) has been ruled out for Sunday's regular season finale against the Bears. It'll be his fifth consecutive missed game.
Chris Reed, who entered the game against the Packers last week when Austin Schlottmann got hurt, will make his first start as a Viking. Reed's struggles with snap cadence led to four procedural penalties, but the Vikings are confident that won't be an issue in Chicago after a week of practice as the first-team center.
Schlottmann is out for the season, so Reed might be auditioning to start at center in the first round of the playoffs. If he struggles, recently-acquired veteran Greg Mancz could be an option.
DT James Lynch (shoulder) is also out against the Bears, as anticipated. The Vikings will active Jonathan Bullard from injured reserve on Saturday, so he could step into the rotation along with Harrison Phillips, Dalvin Tomlinson, Khyiris Tonga, and Esezi Otomewo.
Three players are questionable for the Vikings: LB Brian Asamoah, CB Cameron Dantzler Sr., and OLB Za'Darius Smith. Smith missed Friday's practice to attend to a personal matter, but Kevin O'Connell said he expects the star pass rusher to be with the Vikings in Chicago. Asamoah was limited this week with a knee injury, while Dantzler had some ankle soreness pop up on Friday, O'Connell said.
The Vikings will also activate TE Irv Smith Jr. on Saturday. We'll see if they elevate anyone from the practice squad.
This is a mostly meaningless game for the Vikings. Barring a stunning Cardinals upset over the 49ers, Minnesota will enter the playoffs as the NFC's No. 3 seed. They'd like to get the bad taste of last week's Packers loss out of their mouths and enter the postseason with some momentum, but it would be devastating if any key players got injured in this game.
It sounds like the Vikings will play their starters to begin the game, but probably not for the whole thing.
"We've got a pretty clear-cut plan of how we want to go about the whole game," O'Connell said. "But we're going to go in with the expectation of our guys going and trying to get off to a good start, play good football. We're going to be aware of what we want to do from a standpoint of trying to get some other guys snaps here and there. We've got a good plan."
With the 3-13 Bears starting Nathan Peterman at quarterback, one would imagine the Vikings can rest a lot of starters for much of the game and still win. Then again, we're talking about a team that hasn't won a game by double digits since Week 1.
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