Heading into facing the league's reigning leading rusher and the purveyors of the "Tush Push", the Minnesota Vikings entered Week 7 with the 24th-ranked run defense in the NFL. Apart from finding a way to stop the most unstoppable play the league has seen in a while, containing Saquon Barkley was going to be critical.
While the Vikings did not beat the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, they did hold Barkley to 44 yards on 18 carries. The return of a key piece of the defense who hasn't played since Week 1 was surely helpful to that effort, even if linebacker Blake Cashman didn't light up the stat sheet (six total tackles).
Eric Wilson stepped into a big role when Cashman was out, starting all four of those games and playing every defensive snap in three of them. He also played well enough to possibly keep a prominent defensive role when Cashman returned to action.
But playing time is a zero-sum game. If someone is returning from injury at a position, or someone has proven they deserve more playing time, someone else is in line to lose playing time.
Minnesota Vikings bench Ivan Pace Jr. against Philadelphia Eagles in Week 7
A missed tackle rate approaching 16 percent (15.9 percent) coming into the game against the Eagles, and general struggles easily revealed by the eye test, led to the idea that Ivan Pace Jr. would have a reduced role when Cashman returned. In that scenario, Wilson would remain a starter.
According to Pro Football Focus (h/t to Tyler Forness of AtoZ Sports), Cashman played all 50 of Minnesota's defensive snaps against the Eagles, and Wilson played 42.
With the variable alignments defensive coordinator Brian Flores uses, there isn't always a lot of room for another typical off-ball linebacker to play a lot. On Sunday, safety Josh Metellus lined up as a linebacker more often than he did in previous games.
That left Pace, who did not play a single defensive snap as the odd man out--all the way out, in fact, at least for one game. He was relegated strictly to special teams duty, and perhaps uncoincidentally, the Vikings' run defense was notably better.
Cashman is often overlooked as a critical factor in the success of the Vikings' defense. He was impactful in how Barkley was held in-check on Sunday, but his return to action also led to things aligning more ideally in terms of how linebacker snaps were doled out.
And with that, even with some accounting for matchups and a short week before taking on the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 8, Pace's days as a primary part of the Vikings' defense might be done.