EAGAN, Minn. — The Vikings are running it back with Jalen Redmond.
The team announced it has re-signed the interior defensive lineman who appeared in 13 games of the 2024 regular season and in Minnesota's Wild Card game against the Los Angeles Rams. He made two starts in his first campaign with the Vikings.
Redmond was scheduled to become an exclusive rights free agent at the start of the 2025 League Year in March, but both parties wanted to go ahead and take care of business.
He finished the season with 18 tackles, including six for losses, one QB hit and two passes defensed. Redmond recorded a sack against Houston in his NFL debut and tallied four tackles with two TFLs and both passes defensed in his first career start (against Atlanta).
Redmond became the first Vikings defensive lineman since Pat Williams in Week 13 of 2009 to record two TFLs and two passes defensed in one game.
Vikings General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah participated in a radio interview with "Voice of the Vikings" Paul Allen and credited Senior Vice President of Player Personnel Ryan Grigson and the personnel staff for noticing Redmond's film in late spring.
"I remember he called me and said, 'I like this guy.' I think it was late May," Adofo-Mensah explained. "You have to ask yourself, what's your standard for bringing people in, because a lot of good players are on teams already, so there's going to be something there that's not perfect, not clean, and earlier he had injuries, so you've got to understand why he's available, but ultimately here's why he might be a good bet.
"And you saw the flashes for an interior guy with burst, his run defense kind of jumped out to me," Adofo-Mensah added. "That's the other thing, when you've been together for two or three years, and my history with Grigson before, he knows how to communicate with me, makes a cut-up, knows exactly what we look for.
"I'm like, 'That's a great decision. Why don't you go talk to [Defensive Coordinator Brian Flores] and see what he thinks?' He goes and talks to Flo' and sees the versatility, and it's May, there's 90 people on the roster, and we don't know what it's going to be like in December in U.S. Bank [Stadium], but you put your portfolio together with good bets like that, a good risk-reward proposition, and that's kind of what we've done," he continued. "I'm giving Grigson a lot of credit for that, but that's my entire staff."
