Former Badger Stave Hoping To Make NFL Jump With Vikings
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (WCCO) -- The Minnesota Vikings off season camps are a chance to look at many players on the bubble and begin to evaluate if they have a chance to make the 53-man roster.
Gopher football fans are familiar with one quarterback: Wisconsin's Joel Stave signed as a free agent. Now it's time for Stave to make the big jump from the Big 10.
Gophers fans remember that he was part of this: Keeping the axe in Madison. But his Big Ten career was defined by playing a lot for a program that allowed him to develop with a run-first mentality.
"It was fun. Being able to play as much as I did, getting to start as many games as I did, it was awesome. It was so much fun for me," Stave said.
Wisconsin was a great training ground for Stave, but this is now the NFL. It's where everything intensifies and particularly for a quarterback, the speed of the game.
Welcome to a new level, another league and a big adjustment.
"He actually throws the ball really well. He's got some things mechanically he has to work on like most young guys, but it's really about the speed of getting the ball out and the speed of knowing where to go," Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said.
So he practices and observes, and he studies, studies hard. It's a minimal requirement.
"The speed of the game picks up, the mental side picks up. You've got to make sure that you really know what you're doing on every play," Stave said. "But I think I've done a pretty good job understanding the offense to this point."
Because the goal is to feel like he felt his final season at Wisconsin, and feel it as a Minnesota Viking.
"You know I'm getting there. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of work and effort, but that's the ultimate goal is to really make sure that you have the protection checks, the run checks, everything down as well as you can," Stave said.
