Vikings elevate Luke Stocker, Kenny Willekes to active roster

A couple of moves before Sunday night

Leading up to their Sunday Night Football matchup against the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings have made a pair of roster moves.

The team has announced that they have elevated tight end Luke Stocker and defensive end Kenny Willekes to the active roster ahead of Sunday’s contest.

This will be the second elevation to the active roster for Stocker, who was signed in the week leading up to the Vikings’ victory over the Carolina Panthers before the bye week. Because this is his second elevation, he will only be able to be “elevated” going forward as a COVID-19 replacement. With Ben Ellefson going on IR this week and being set to miss two more games after this week, there would seem to be a decent chance that Stocker could get signed to the 53-man roster, but we’ll have to see what happens.

This will be the NFL debut for Willekes, who was one of the Vikings’ four seventh-round picks in the 2020 NFL Draft out of Michigan State. He tore an ACL in Training Camp in 2020 and went on injured reserve, and was then part of the Vikings’ final cuts in camp this year. He will rotate in at defensive end now that Stephen Weatherly has been traded to Denver.

That should be the end of the roster moves for the Vikings before this Sunday’s game against the Cowboys. If there are any more changes, we will let you know right away.