Webb Making The Most Of Switch To Receiver With Vikings
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- It's the first game-week of the season for the Minnesota Vikings, and the roster is now set after Saturday's final cuts.
Cut day can be nerve-wracking, but Joe Webb had a plan. After spending most of his career with the Vikings has a quarterback, he switched to wide receiver when Minnesota signed Matt Cassel in the offseason.
It meant his spot on the roster was no longer a guarantee and that he had to sweat out cut day like many other players around the NFL.
"I did things to take my mind off of it," Webb said. "I went to the State Fair, ate a couple corn dogs and stuff. Watched football and played video games."
Webb's a receiver in the video game this year, and now also in real life, after making the team. He kept it pretty simple when he talked about switching to wide receiver and how he made the 53-man roster.
"Hard work and dedication," Webb attributed for his successful positional transition. "You've got to work your craft. That's our job, as an NFL professional. It's your guys' job to go to the office and do what you do, write papers or whatever. But you've got to work, you've got to work at it. And hard work pays off."
The same is true for Marcus Sherels, who was on the bubble until he broke off a 109-yard kickoff return touchdown and picked off a pass in the preseason finale.
"He'd done well in the spring as well, so we always knew about Marcus' ability," coach Leslie Frazier said. "But those plays definitely helped."
"You've got to leave it all out on the field, that's what they say," Sherels said. "Try to make plays, and I took advantage of it during that game."
Things rarely go quite as expected in the lead-up to the season, even for guys who make the team as expected. That's true for Desmond Bishop. He did make the team after kind of a rough start to the preseason. But he's not the starter. In fact, Leslie Frazier said Monday quite definitively and somewhat surprisingly, it'll be Marvin Mitchell at outside linebacker.
