Minnesota Vikings defensive end Danielle Hunter was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Week on Wednesday.
The fifth-year pass rushing beast from LSU recorded three sacks in the Vikes’ 20-7 home win over Detroit on Sunday, becoming the youngest player in NFL history to record 50 sacks.
Not bad for a third round draft pick who registered just 4.5 sacks in his three seasons at LSU from 2012-14.
“Did we think he’d get to 50 sacks by the time he was 25, no, (but) we felt like we could improve him as a pass rusher,” head coach Mike Zimmer said of the team’s evaluation of Hunter before drafting him.
“We looked at his athletic ability, which was top notch. We looked at the type of person he was, which was top notch. We looked at his (low) sack numbers, and why he didn’t have any, and felt (he could become a better pass rusher) if we changed some of his angles and some of the things he did, changed his hand useage and things like that.”
The Vikings will need Hunter to disrupt Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers in Los Angeles on Sunday. Rivers threw for 324 yards and 3 touchdowns in the Chargers’ highest-wattage output of the season last weekend, a 45-10 win at Jacksonville.
The Vikings are 2.5-point favorites. The game was “flexed out” of its 7:20 p.m. nationally-televised kickoff to a 3:05 regional game, which you can hear on the Vikings Radio Network exclusively in Sioux Falls on KWSN.
98.1 FM and 1230-AM.
