Vikings provide promising injury update about T.J. Hockenson

After the Minnesota Vikings placed T.J. Hockenson on the physically unable to perform list at the start of this year's training camp, the assumption has been that the veteran tight end probably isn't going to be ready for the team's regular-season opener on September 8th.

At this point, this seems to be what is still going to happen, but Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell certainly sounded very encouraged on Friday when he shared the following about Hockenson's recovery progress.

"Every time I see him working on the side field, it becomes awfully tempting to corner [Vikings VP of Player Health and Performance] Tyler Williams somewhere in the building and demand answers on when we'll be able to start implementing him maybe off the PUP and get him a little bit of work, whether it's just simply individual, some routes on air, start getting him some timing with our quarterbacks.

But where he's at, albeit very well ahead of maybe where some of the medical folks thought he would be, there is an injury there that a timeline exists and we're going to try to stay true to that while also giving him opportunities to push to maybe shrink that timeline a little bit."

Could Minnesota Vikings TE T.J. Hockenson be ready to play sooner than expected?

Despite expressing how pleased he is with the progress Hockenson has been making, O'Connell also admitted on Friday that he still isn't at the point where he thinks the tight end has a legitimate shot to be on the field for Minnesota's 2024 regular-season opener.

Even if Hockenson is unable to play on September 8th against the New York Giants, the Vikings' optimism about his recovery has some thinking he could definitely be on the field at some point during the first few weeks of the regular season.

At the same time, Minnesota also wants Hockenson's chance of re-injury to get as low as it possibly can before he's back in the lineup. From the sounds of it, that might require O'Connell to be patient about his tight end's availability for a little longer than he would probably like.

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