The Vikings have completed their Friday morning workout and Blakeslee Stadium in Mankato and afterwards, head coach Leslie Frazier and a handful of players stopped to speak with the media. Here's your quick midday update.
'Seize the moment'
Retired center Matt Birk, a Viking from 1998-2008, popped through camp on Thursday evening to speak to the team. Birk, who finished his career with a Super Bowl triumph with the Ravens last February, reminded the current Vikings to seize the moment in an address that several folks throughout the organization said packed quite a punch.
Leslie Frazier's takeaway: "I'm hoping that our players will think about the fact of how important this moment is, that you can't be looking to next year and you can't be looking back at the past. But being able to seize this moment and the work that's involved with coming together as a football team. He really stressed that point.
"With some of the ups and downs that they had a year ago in Baltimore and yet their team really stuck together, especially late in the season when they made the coaching change on offense [to replace offensive coordinator Cam Cameron with Jim Caldwell]. So that part of it, being able to stay together as a team through some of the highs and lows of an NFL season and then seizing this moment."
Birk told Vikings.com that he was invited to camp by Frazier last month and couldn't say no.
"What a great honor," he said. "I think so highly of Coach Frazier and what he's doing here and the program he runs. And obviously I have an affinity for the Vikings organization. So I thought, man, this is a great honor for me. And it's also a lot of fun because I do get to come down here and have a lot of laughs and reconnect with a lot of people and I don't have to practice."
As for soaking in that Super Bowl triumph, Birk seems thrilled to have finished his career on such a high note.