The injury that changed the franchise direction...

Teddy Bridgewater was 23 and taking control of a Super Bowl contender when his devastating knee injury set Minnesota’s decade-long QB carousel in motion — a journey that now lands on Murray.

There appeared to be little at stake for the Vikings’ starters on Aug. 30, 2016.

The practice was supposed to be a brief coda to a preseason that had veterans believing they were on the verge of something special.

The Vikings left U.S. Bank Stadium two days earlier charged with optimism. Third-year quarterback Teddy Bridgewater completed 12 of 16 passes for 161 yards and a touchdown while running for a 22-yard gain in a 23-10 victory over the San Diego Chargers. Gone were the cramped, dingy quarters of the Metrodome; so too, it seemed, were the Vikings’ days of pining for a franchise quarterback.

The preseason game confirmed to the public what players already knew.

“I told people that whole offseason, ‘It’s like we had finally handed the keys to the car from Adrian Peterson to Teddy Bridgewater,’” tight end Kyle Rudolph said. “That whole training camp, our offense was Teddy’s offense. We were doing things that made Teddy comfortable and that Teddy liked.”

Ten years later, there’s a reason Rudolph and so many others can still recall the details of that Aug. 30, 2016, practice.

That day Bridgewater sustained so much damage to his left knee — on a play he wasn’t hit — he left Vikings headquarters by ambulance.

The circumstances of his injury shocked a team that believed it was on the verge of Super Bowl contention. It shook teammates who saw their exuberant 23-year-old quarterback writhing in pain as the Vikings medical staff applied an air cast.

“I was making a drop, and I could see right through the guard-center window,” linebacker Anthony Barr said. “And you just see him laying there with his leg in the air, facing backwards. It was just like, ‘What the [expletive] happened?’ It happened so fast. It was two seconds.”

In some ways, those two seconds changed the Vikings for 10 years.

Teddy Bridgewater was supposed to be the Vikings’ future

Chad Greenway entered the 2016 season knowing his 11th year in the NFL would likely be his last. One of the few remaining Vikings from the 2009 team that lost the NFC title game to the Saints in overtime, the linebacker thought his final year could match or surpass that run.

Bridgewater, the No. 32 overall pick in the 2014 draft out of Louisville, had raised expectations by leading the Vikings to an NFC North title in his first full season as the starter. He nearly led them past a Seahawks team that had reached the previous two Super Bowls, only for Blair Walsh to miss a 27-yard field goal in the final minute of a 10-9 loss.

“Everybody loved his personality, loved who he was,” Greenway said. “Coming off the year [before], you miss the kick with Blair, you’re like, ‘OK, this guy, coming back for my last year, we have a chance to really do something.’”

Then something happened that “changed the entire trajectory of the organization,” Barr said.

Players returned two days after the Chargers game for what was supposed to be a light practice. Some veterans wondered why they were practicing at all; most weren’t expected to play in the preseason finale against the Rams two days later, with roster cuts to follow.

The Vikings went through individual and position drills, then moved into a team period. The play call had Rudolph 18-20 yards downfield on a route, with Bridgewater dropping back to pass.

Rudolph turned around when he realized the ball had never been thrown.

“The dispersion of bodies, like everybody just getting away, it was like, ‘That’s weird — what’s going on?’ ” Rudolph said.

Some players dropped to a knee to pray for Bridgewater. Others recoiled from the sight of the injury. Some cursed and threw helmets, realizing what the scene in front of them would mean for their season.

Head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman was standing 25 yards away.

As Sugarman approached, he and assistant athletic trainer Rob Roche exchanged a glance. Bridgewater had a dislocated knee — one of the few true orthopedic emergencies.

“Every team in the NFL currently has to do emergency action planning, and they have to practice it,” Sugarman said. “You have to be able to identify what an emergency is, and a dislocated knee is an orthopedic emergency. It’s an immediate call for an ambulance. Everyone around us was panicking. Players, coaches. It’s an ugly-looking injury. We don’t have the ability to panic when you are a medical first-responder.”

As the Vikings medical staff applied an air cast to Bridgewater’s leg and called 911, players never heard the words “move the drill,” the clinical command to keep a practice rolling several yards away from an injured player. Instead, practice was canceled just minutes in. An ambulance soon arrived to carry Bridgewater to Fairview Southdale.

The mood in the Vikings locker room “felt like a funeral,” Greenway said.

“From that thing of, ‘I guess we have to practice,’ to, ‘Oh my gosh, our quarterback,’ to, ‘Oh my gosh, cut day is in two days,’ the swing of emotions were just exhausting that day, just absolutely exhausting,” offensive lineman Jeremiah Sirles said.

The Vikings scrambled to find a way forward

Rudolph traveled to the hospital that evening to find Bridgewater out of surgery.

The quarterback was already talking about his recovery as if it was inevitable.

“He was like, ‘I’ll go rehab. I’m gonna be fine. I’ll be back,’ ” Rudolph said.

While Bridgewater looked toward his rehab, the Vikings faced a more immediate problem: They still had a team they believed could contend for a championship.

Four days later, they sent a first- and fourth-round pick to Philadelphia for quarterback Sam Bradford, the 2008 Heisman Trophy winner and the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft. Coach Mike Zimmer made clear to players afterward the expectations remained the same.

“Zimmer walked into our offensive line room and said, ‘I just gave up a first-round pick for Sam Bradford; we’re here to win the Super Bowl,’ ” Sirles said. “And we’re like, ‘OK, Sam Bradford, let’s roll, then.’ Because I’ll tell you, before Teddy got hurt, we didn’t think that was out of the realm of possibility.”

The team raced out to a 5-0 start before collapsing, becoming the third team in NFL history to miss the playoffs after such a start.

Bradford’s knee issues resurfaced early in the 2017 season. That reopened a search for a franchise quarterback that still hasn’t stopped.

Then came a decade of Vikings quarterbacks

Bradford’s knee problems led to Case Keenum stepping in to lead the Vikings to the NFC title game after a 13-3 season in 2017.

That offseason, the Vikings’ reservations over whether Keenum could maintain his level of play, and concerns about the long-term health of Bridgewater and Bradford, led them to give Kirk Cousins the first fully guaranteed contract in NFL history in March 2018.

Cousins made $185 million in six seasons in Minnesota, but he won only one playoff game. He left to sign with Atlanta in March 2024.

The Vikings then signed Sam Darnold and spent the No. 10 overall pick in 2024 on J.J. McCarthy. Darnold left after one year and won the Super Bowl with the Seahawks last season. McCarthy’s 10-game stint as the starter in 2025 left the Vikings leery of handing him the job without competition again, so they signed Kyler Murray to a one-year deal in the spring.

Coach Kevin O’Connell named Murray the starter on Aug. 11. Murray is set to be the Vikings’ fourth Week 1 starter in the past four years, and the sixth in 11 seasons since Bridgewater’s injury. He will be the 13th QB to start a game for the team in that span. Of the 12 before Murray, only four (Bradford, Cousins, Sean Mannion and Nick Mullens) have started games in more than one season for the Vikings.

Could Kyler Murray end the Vikings’ QB search?

Even now, longtime team officials view the moment Bridgewater went down as an inflection point in franchise history.

“He was supposed to be the homegrown, rookie-deal quarterback,” Barr said. “The domino effect for 10 years, even today, you’re probably still feeling the effects of that.”

Bridgewater did have one final chapter with the Vikings.

He returned to the field 16 months after his injury in a blowout victory over the Bengals on Dec. 17, 2017, replacing Keenum in the fourth quarter. Keenum was among those leading the raucous reception for his teammate while Bridgewater cupped his hands over his helmet to hear the play call.

Bridgewater left the Vikings that offseason, but went on to start another 37 NFL games. His teammates who were with him the day of his injury weren’t surprised.

“His outlook on really the worst day of his life … he’s encouraging me, like, ‘Rudy, you’re gonna be fine. Go have a great year. It doesn’t matter who’s throwing you the ball,’ " Rudolph said. “You’ve got a guy laying in his hospital bed after a devastating injury. That was the optimism and mentality that Teddy had.”

Bridgewater retired in 2023 to lead his high school alma mater, Miami Northwestern, to a Florida state championship as head coach. After coming out of retirement to play for the Lions in 2024 and the Buccaneers in 2025, he rejoined the Lions this year but announced earlier this month he was officially done playing in the NFL at age 33.

“It’s so crazy 10 years ago around this time, I suffered one of the most gruesome knee injuries the game itself, its players and some doctors had ever seen,” Bridgewater wrote on Instagram. “Everything football-related since 2016 had been fueled by the “experts” predicting that I would never play football again. We really showed them by playing 10 more seasons!”

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