Christian Darrisaw's status for Week 1 vs. Bears will be determined based on one major thing

The Minnesota Vikings are hoping to have left tackle Christian Darrisaw for their season-opening game against the Chicago Bears, but it's not certain that he will be ready to go. Head coach Kevin O'Connell spoke about his potential availability on Wednesday and kept the door open to playing on Monday night.

"I know he's he had a great camp, you know, checked every box from a workload standpoint, building into this week. He'll practice today, and we've always with CD [Christian Darrisaw], just with how committed he's been to taking the daily approach, we've done the same with him," O'Connell said. "So we're going to progress as forward and be smart, but we're going to give him every opportunity to practice and then see how he feels, and then ultimately, in regards to his availability, we'll make that decision as the week progresses."

Christian Darrisaw Week 1 status vs. Bears to be determined by practice

The Vikings are doing what they've done with every player in O'Connell's tenure with a serious injury: play it safe. Tight end T.J. Hockenson arguably could have played a week or two earlier than he did, but they were playing the long game with him and it worked out well.

Hockenson played just over nine months after surgery to repair his torn ACL, and Darrisaw, who also had MCL damage to his knee, had surgery on November 3rd last year, which puts Monday's game 10 months out from surgery.

"He looks really good. I think he's surprised even himself, early on in training camp, as we began that kind of really crafted plan by Tyler and the doctors and Christian himself," O'Connell added. "I think in the moment, he had some really, really good progression days where we've been able to stack it up. And we're in game week now, and he's going to take a lot of reps today, if not all of them, and then we'll see how he feels. Ultimately, Christian is such an important player to our team that we want to make sure that we're smart about the plan. But also, I think he's earned the right to buy all the things he's done. There's no reason to make the decision for any other reason than what's best for CD, and he's going to be heavily involved in that."

As O'Connell alluded to, Darrisaw has been working hard throughout the process, and he's used both minicamp and training camp as different checkpoints. This week is going to be really important, and they won't play him until he's 100%. If he responds well, that's going to make it much more likely for him to play.

The Vikings have an extra day for Darrisaw to get ready, and the hope is that he will be.

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