Another Brother

The Minnesota Vikings added another player with a brother in the NFL. This may be something that interests only me but it's still something. The Vikings signed safety Brock Vereen to their practice squad on Wednesday. He worked out with his new team yesterday. It was a whirlwind week for Vereen. He was on the field for the Chicago Bears playing against the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. He didn't play so hot which might have been a factor in the team releasing him on Tuesday. A greater factor might have been the Bears overhauling their defense after the third game of the season. They also traded pass rusher Jared Allen to the Carolina Panthers and linebacker Jon Bostic to the New England Patriots. Maybe they tried to trade Vereen as well but found no takers. The Bears unloaded three prominent defensive players before the season was a quarter done. Are they already playing for 2016? Anyway, the Vikings have added a young, still promising football player at a position of need. The safety spot opposite Harrison Smith has been a nagging team need since Smith established himself as a topnotch defensive playmaker as a rookie in 2012. The Vikings also added a third player that has a brother playing on another NFL team. Which may or may not interest only me.

As the 2012 NFL Draft approached USC tackle Matt Kalil was a likely target of the Vikings. One of the things that I liked about him was that his brother was Pro Bowl center Ryan Kalil of the Carolina Panthers. It was pretty clear that the football-playing brothers had a very competitive relationship. Big surprise. They come from a sports-oriented family. Their father was drafted by the Buffalo Bills and played in the USFL. Both brothers played at USC. Ryan was already successful in the NFL. I just figured that the competitive nature of both brothers made Matt not being successful simply impossible. Matt has struggled the last two years after a very promising Pro Bowl rookie season but he seems to be coming around so far this season.

The Vikings selected UCLA linebacker Eric Kendricks in the second round of the 2015 NFL Draft. He had an excellent college career that was capped by taking home the Butkus Award as the best collegiate linebacker. Brother Mychal plays linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles. He's emerged as one of the most promising young linebackers in the league. I've followed Mychal's career quite closely as he was one of the best linebackers to ever play at Cal. I was a little disappointed when the younger Kendricks decided to take his football skills to UCLA rather than Cal. I guess that he wanted to walk his own road. The Vikings didn't select Mychal Kendricks in the 2012 NFL draft but at least they got his brother. Both Kendricks brothers look like they'll be tackling NFL running backs for a nice long time.

Now the Vikings have added Brock Vereen. He's the younger brother of New York Giants running back Shane Vereen. The Giants signed the older brother this past offseason after he helped the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl last year. Like the Kalil brothers, the Vereen brothers' father played some football at the professional level. Henry Vereen was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and played in the CFL. Shane was a college teammate of Mychal Kendricks at Cal from 2008-10. I've followed his career closely as well. Both older brothers showed the work ethic and effort at Cal that I hope found it's way into the makeup of their younger brothers. One other interesting aspect of all these brothers is that all are from California and all but the younger Vereen played their college ball at Pac-12 schools in the state. Brock Vereen traveled all the way to Minnesota. He's returning to a city and a football field that he knows well.

The last football-playing brother to join the Vikings could become a key addition. Brock Vereen plays a position of need. Andrew Sendejo and Robert Blanton have been decent, even solid, as recent starters but the Vikings have been looking for more than solid. Antone Exum has terrific athletic ability but he isn't quite ready for some of the nuances of the position. The Vikings play Harrison Smith all over the field. They need a free safety on the back end that they can trust to make the right reads and react quickly and correctly. Making some big plays would certainly be a plus. Coming out of Minnesota, Vereen's strengths were as a rangy free safety. He Bears drafted him in the fourth round of the 2014 NFL Draft to play that role in Chicago. He played in every game as a rookie with four starts. The fact that they released him this week doesn't look great but who knows what's going on with that team right now? It looks like a fire sale has started. The Vikings told him that he'll start out on the practice squad with the opportunity to move to the active roster. We'll see.

I like these football-playing families. The Kalil, Kendricks, and Vereen families don't get the attention of the Manning, Matthews, and Nesser families but maybe they will after this.