The Vikings landed a key reinforcement at cornerback.
The workforce agreed to phrases with former All-Professional cornerback Stephon Gilmore on Sunday morning, a league supply confirmed. ESPN first reported the settlement, a one-year take care of $7 million assured and price as much as $10 million.
Gilmore, 33, seems more likely to bounce right into a beginning lineup alongside cornerbacks Byron Murphy Jr. and Shaq Griffin at a place the place the Vikings are skinny. His embellished profession — 5 Professional Bowls, two All-Professional choices — brings much-needed expertise and manufacturing after he began each recreation for the Cowboys final season. He deflected 13 passes and had two interceptions and a pressured fumble.
He’s conversant in the Vikings facility and coaches after taking a free-agent go to to TCO Efficiency Heart final week. Throughout the Aug. 12 go to, Gilmore met with head coach Kevin O’Connell and defensive backs coach Daronte Jones, amongst others.
“I’ve had a ton of respect in Stephon Gilmore’s profession enjoying in opposition to him,” O’Connell mentioned after the go to. “It is a man that’s carried out it at a extremely excessive degree for a very long time.”
Gilmore already is aware of Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores from their time collectively in New England, the place they spent the 2017 and 2018 seasons, the final of which Flores served as Patriots play-caller in a Tremendous Bowl-winning season. Gilmore’s expertise with Flores may rapidly get him onto the sector by the Vikings’ Sept. 8 season opener on the New York Giants.
That’s assuming Gilmore is totally recovered from January surgical procedure to restore a torn labrum in his shoulder. Gilmore suffered the harm throughout a shoulder dislocation within the Cowboys’ regular-season finale. He wore a harness and performed by means of it throughout Dallas’ playoff loss to Inexperienced Bay.
He’s the fifth veteran cornerback added by the Vikings because the begin of coaching camp after rookie Khyree Jackson was killed in a automobile accident and second-year nook Mekhi Blackmon tore an ACL on the primary day of observe. The Vikings have signed Fabian Moreau, Duke Shelley, Jacobi Francis and Nahshon Wright, who was acquired through commerce with the Cowboys for Andrew Sales space Jr.