T-Jack Practices, Rosenfels Rests
Reported by: Joe Nelson
Updated August 8, 2009
Email: booth@kfan.com

A hot and humid Saturday afternoon in Mankato turned into a pleasant day off for nine players on the Vikings roster. Tarvaris Jackson, who left last nights practice after hearing his knee pop, was not among the group of nine. T-Jack, however, did practice at full speed and showed no ill-effects from the apparent popping sound a night ago.

The nine players that Coach Childress gave a day off included:

QB, Sage Rosenfels
RB, Chester Taylor
TE, Jim Kleinsasser
CB, Antoine Winfield
DT, Pat Williams
LB, Ben Leber
K, Ryan Longwell
OL, Steve Hutchinson
OL, Artis Hicks

As for Jackson, he obviously worked with the first team offense on a regular basis this afternoon. Rosenfels being given the day off also allowed for some more playing time for third string quarterback, John David Booty. Booty had seen very limited action ever since Jackson returned after missing five practices earlier this week.

Today proved to be a nice opportunity for Jackson to improve on his play from last night – a night in which he threw multiple errant passes including an interception to second team safety, Eric Frampton. Jackson didn’t look far superior from last night’s session, but he did improve slightly. However, the natural mood of the practice wasn’t at as high of a tempo as it was last night in front of a near capacity crowd at Blakeslee Stadium. The hot weather most certainly had an impact on that.

Practice was originally scheduled from 2:45-5:00 p.m. today but Coach Childress moved the starting time to 2:15 p.m., and instead of working the entire two hours and 15 minutes, the practiced ended an hour early, at about 3:30 p.m.

News and Notes:

Rookie cornerback, Asher Allen had to leave practice with an apparent injury to his one of his fingers. The injury occurred during 7-on-7 drills after deflecting a pass with his left hand. No word as of yet on the severity of the injury.

Defensive end, Brian Robison was limited again today because of a hamstring injury. He’s been out since Monday but did get some individual work in this afternoon. It’s a sign that he’s getting closer to returning to regular action. Whether or not he will be available for Friday night’s preseason opener at Indianapolis likely won’t be clear until at-least the middle of next week.

The Vikings get their only day off of training camp tomorrow, but are then back at it Monday morning at 9:00 a.m.