How rookie defensive tackle Elijah Williams, the Vikings’ unlikeliest player, made the team

Vikings defensive tackle Elijah Williams was not among the 329 players invited to the NFL scouting combine. He was not among 257 players selected in this year’s NFL draft. He was not among 18 undrafted rookies the Vikings guaranteed money to after the draft.

Yet Williams, a four-year standout for Morgan State, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) program in Baltimore, was one of the 53 players to make the Vikings’ Week 1 roster.

“I’m really still trying to process it,” Williams said. “It’s almost as if I’m still sort of in a dream. But I understand that I have to come every day, keep my head down, continue grinding, because this is only the start.”

Williams took the unlikeliest of paths to make the season-opening roster as a tryout player just four months ago. He reported to the Vikings facility for a three-day rookie minicamp in May, guaranteed nothing but the workout clothes he was given. He couldn’t even try out in pads, since NFL rules prevent padded practices before late July.

“I came to the tryout knowing, ‘Alright, we’re not going to be doing much,’” Williams recalled. “I just gave it my all and tried to not make the same mistake twice.”

After the draft, Vikings defensive line coach Marcus Dixon, a fellow HBCU graduate from Hampton University, quickly reached out to Williams, Morgan State’s career leader in sacks (31) and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year in 2024. The Vikings were among a handful of NFL teams, including the Ravens, Giants and Jets, pursuing Williams, according to his agent Dwayne Treece.

But Williams picked the Vikings and Dixon, who needed only the first practice of the three-day tryout to tell coach Kevin O’Connell that they had something in this 6-foot-3, 298-pound defensive tackle.

Defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, the 32-year-old, two-time Pro Bowl selection, first noticed Williams as a diligent and eager rookie. Williams sat in the front of every meeting room and asked “a lot of questions,” Hargrave said.

Before long, the rookie became a topic of conversation among veterans impressed by his preseason plays.

There was the exhibition opener against the Texans on Aug. 9. Williams defeated a pass blocker so abruptly that he stopped moving, thinking the ball must have been thrown.

“I guess he thought it was a screen,” Hargrave said. “You can just kind of tell he was special.”

During the preseason finale on Aug. 22, Williams leveled a Titans returner while sprinting downfield on the kickoff team.

Williams suffered a hamstring injury in Nashville that could keep him from playing in Monday night’s season opener in Chicago.

Defensive coordinator Brian Flores described an unexpected ascension that kept impressing coaches. Williams is the first Vikings rookie to make a Week 1 roster after a tryout in recent memory. A team spokesperson could not find another example within the past decade. Other tryout players, such as receiver Adam Thielen and fullback C.J. Ham, famously made Vikings rosters, but not immediately after their rookie training camp.

“He really took advantage of his opportunities, and just built and built all the way through training camp,” Flores said. ”It was one of those things early on where it’s, ‘He’s making a couple good plays. Maybe we have something here. Maybe it’s a practice squad.’ Then it’s like, ‘Whoa, hold on, hold on a second,’ and it just kind of built and built.”

Hargrave, a 10th-year veteran on his fourth NFL team, said this is his first rookie teammate to make a Week 1 roster off a tryout. He quickly bonded with Williams over their HBCU connections; Hargrave attended South Carolina State.

“That’s little bro,” Hargrave said of Williams. “This might be the first time I’ve had something like that where we got three HBCU people in the same room,” including Dixon, the D-line coach.

Dealing Phillips opened a spot for Williams, acquired two sixth-round picks and cleared over $11 million in cap space spread across the next two seasons. Defensive tackle Jalen Redmond will replace Phillips in the starting lineup.

“I’m always trying to be ahead of what could possibly come,” Adofo-Mensah said, “and then you look at a really deep, deep D-line room and thinking about a possible rotation, different things like that. Just trying to maximize our resources and best way we can.”

While unknowingly on his way out, Phillips helped the revamped Vikings D-line, including Williams, Hargrave and Pro Bowl defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, get up to speed with their new surroundings and playbook.

“Hitting him up about where to go, how to do things,” Hargrave said. “It was sad to see him go. It’s a crazy business. It’s so unexpected, but we just wish him the best and try to bring Elijah along with us.”