It’s time for the Vikings to bench Ed Ingram and start Dalton Risner at right guard on Thursday night against the Rams.
Six games into the season, the year three breakout the Vikings were hoping to get from Ingram just isn’t happening. He was their lowest-graded player on offense (per Pro Football Focus) for the second straight game in Sunday’s loss against the Lions. Among the 65 guards who have played at least 200 snaps this year, his 48.3 grade ranks 63rd. PFF grades are just one data point and not an end-all, be-all of player evaluation, but in this case, they match the eye test.
Ingram is a liability in pass protection, whether it’s in one-on-one matchups or in correctly identifying and picking up stunts. Against Detroit, he was flagged for holding when he got run over by Alim McNeill and sort of dragged him into a dangerous low hit on Sam Darnold. He’s a solid run blocker, but not so good in that phase that it outweighs the negatives in pass blocking (his poor game against the Lions was atypically more about run blocking than pass pro).
Since being drafted in the second round in 2022, Ingram has been a full-time starter for the Vikings. That experiment should come to an end this week. At this point, 2.5 years and nearly 40 games into his career, Ingram is who the tape and the grades say he is. It’s time to make a change in the starting lineup.
Risner opening the season on IR with a back issue meant there wasn’t a competition for that spot, but he worked at RG in training camp for a reason — and now the veteran says he’s 100 percent healthy. Risner’s track record suggests that he has a much higher floor than Ingram in pass protection. Even if he’s slightly worse as a run blocker, which isn’t a guarantee, there seems to be a strong chance his overall performance will be better. Ingram has a pass-blocking grade of 35.8 this season; Risner’s never been below 67 in that department in his five-year career.
Coming off their first loss of the season against one of the best teams in the league, there’s no need for the 5-1 Vikings to panic ahead of this week’s game against the Rams. With that said, they should have a sense of urgency to patch up any weaknesses that have been exposed through six games. One of those has clearly been Ingram, who should be benched in favor of Risner on Thursday night.