EAGAN, Minn. -- Late Thursday morning, quarterback Carson Wentz was sitting quietly in the Minnesota Vikings locker room. A week ago, the stall belonged to defensive tackle and team captain Harrison Phillips.
A few paces to the right, a different locker was being assembled. A No. 19 jersey hung inside, while a nameplate displaying "Adam Thielen" would soon be added for the team's newest receiver.
The scene provided tight symbolism for a surprising level of late-August roster churn in Minnesota. During the span of a week, the Vikings signed Wentz and made four trades that involved four players and an exchange of 11 draft picks.
They deepened their quarterback depth behind J.J. McCarthy, added a likely Week 1 starter in Thielen and sought to get some return on a trio of players -- Phillips, quarterback Sam Howell and cornerback Mekhi Blackmon, whose future with the team had grown murky.
The moves hit lower than the monumental trade this week that sent pass rusher Micah Parsons from the Dallas Cowboys to the Vikings' NFC North rival Green Bay Packers. Collectively, however, they were more significant than the typical fine-tuning that NFL teams engage in at this time of the year.
What compelled the team to shake up multiple positions after a busy and expensive offseason? Simply put, the Vikings rebalanced their roster after identifying one area of surplus and acknowledging multiple personnel deficits.
"We're excited where we are," general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said. "Obviously, there was a lot of hard decisions. I think we have a deep roster, and with that came just some hard decisions. And you never want to trade away players, especially ones that do the right thing and do everything, that fit into this culture and be about this culture. But those are things that come with the job, and we have to do them."
Anyone who watched training camp would agree the Vikings had more NFL-caliber defensive linemen than they could keep on the roster. Phillips was the most efficient departure, given the new contracts of free agents Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave, along with the presence of promising younger players Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, Jalen Redmond, Levi Drake Rodriguez and Elijah Williams.
The Vikings were eager enough to make the move that they paid $3.7 million of Phillips' 2025 salary to finalize a trade that gave them a sixth-round pick in 2026 and moved their 2027 seventh-rounder up to a sixth. In essence, they used Phillips' contract to buy draft capital and then began the process of alleviating a projected $60 million cap deficit for 2026. (The deal wiped out Phillips' $7.5 million cap hit for next season.)
The rest of the action, however, reflected urgent need. As camp concluded, the Vikings had only one fully trusted, healthy and available wide receiver. That was Justin Jefferson, who had only recently returned to practice after missing almost all of training camp because of a strained left hamstring. Jordan Addison was facing a three-game suspension, Jalen Nailor was nursing an injured hand, Rondale Moore had been lost for the season because of a left knee injury and none of the remaining depth had stood out.
The Vikings scrambled to answer a narrow question: Who could they find with enough skill and experience in their scheme to step immediately into their starting lineup?
Thielen was among the few players in the league who fit that description, having played 10 seasons for the Vikings -- including one during coach Kevin O'Connell's first season in 2022. The cost was significant, including all of Thielen's revised 2025 salary and a package of 2026 draft picks that ESPN Research collectively valued as a 2026 fourth-round pick.
Count Thielen among those who were shocked by how it played out. "I just didn't think that this was even a possibility," Thielen said. "I thought the next time I would be talking to [reporters in Minnesota] is when I was signing a one-day contract and retiring."
Wentz, meanwhile, was the Vikings' response to Howell's underwhelming efforts to learn the Vikings offense and establish trust as a viable option behind McCarthy. Trading Howell to the Philadelphia Eagles essentially recovered the draft assets the Vikings had used to acquire him from the Seattle Seahawks during the draft, but in the end his four months in Minnesota left the team in a bind.
Wentz has some experience in a similar scheme, having spent 2023 as a backup for coach Sean McVay's Los Angeles Rams. On his sixth team in as many seasons, he has been through schematic crash courses before. But he made clear upon his arrival that his task in the short term will be challenging.
"It's never easy," he said. "There's some overlap, some spots I've been in the past, which that definitely helps. But it's still a new language, still new things."
Acquiring a presumptive No. 2 quarterback two weeks before the first game of the regular season is far from ideal team building. But the Vikings pulled off a similar maneuver in 2022 when they added Nick Mullens as Kirk Cousins' backup three weeks before the start of the season, and O'Connell did not appear worried this week about the short- or long-term implications.
"Where we ended up with our quarterback room," O'Connell said, "the ultimate goal was to feel how we feel right now. And I've got a lot of confidence in what we do here at that position. ... We've got some experience with bringing in some quarterbacks that had previous experiences elsewhere and finding a way to maximize in a short amount of time a level of comfort in the system, and then ultimately, doing the things we need to do if that player were to play significant snaps, doing the things that help them have success, and that would be our plan."
The Vikings didn't act on all of their personnel alarm bells. After trading away Blackmon, who hadn't made much impact since returning from a torn ACL that cost him all of 2024, the Vikings kept only four cornerbacks on their 53-man roster.
Adofo-Mensah pointed out some mitigating factors, most notably that veteran Fabian Moreau is on their practice squad. The Vikings could rely more on nickel packages that use a safety instead of a cornerback, Adofo-Mensah implied.
Ultimately, the Vikings arrived at the NFL's end-of-summer pause with a roster that needed more than a tuneup. Was it enough? Their season begins in nine days.