Here's a sneak peak at the story Dan and I have written for tomorrow's paper on what appears to be a right knee injury to rookie receiver Greg Childs ...

By Mark Craig and Dan Wiederer

MANKATO -- Things were going well in Saturday night's light-hitting, controlled scrimmage until rookie receiver Greg Childs went down clutching his right knee, the same knee in which Childs suffered a torn patellar tendon in during his junior season at Arkansas.

Childs was injured on a pass into the left corner of the end zone at Blakeslee Stadium. He was quickly tended to by Vikings head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman before being taken off the field on a cart. The extent of the injury was to be determined during further examination Saturday night.

"I don't have any information at this point of exactly what happened and what his state is," coach Leslie Frazier said. "You hate to see any player go down for any injury. And Greg has struggled with injuries as we all know as he was coming out of college. Hopefully things will work out and it's nothing serious."

Childs fell to the Vikings in the fourth round of this year's draft (134th overall) in part because of the knee injury his junior season. He was injured during the eighth game that season and didn't fully recover during a senior season that saw him catch only 21 passes for 240 yards and no touchdowns. As a junior, he was limited to 46 catches for 659 yards and six touchdowns.

The Vikings are banking on Childs returning to health and becoming at the least a red-zone weapon because of his size (6-3, 217), athleticism and ball skills. He is having a good camp and has put himself in position to be one of the team's top four receivers.

"It's tough," quarterback Christian Ponder said of the injury. "I don't know what happened. Obviously he was holding his knee. And that's never a good thing. It's unfortunate. We saw some of those plays he made a couple days ago. And this is unfortunate. Hopefully we'll be OK. We'll see."

Meanwhile, Frazier said guard Geoff Schwartz had surgery for his sports hernia on Friday. Frazier said he's expecting Schwartz to be out at least four weeks.