Danielle Hunter Seen Rehabbing Injury at Vikings Practice on Friday

The Vikings' star defensive end took another step towards returning to action.

Vikings star defensive end Danielle Hunter missed his 16th consecutive practice on Friday, but he did make some progress that suggests he still has a chance to play in the season opener against the Packers in nine days.

Hunter last practiced exactly three weeks ago on August 14th, which was the first official day of Vikings training camp. He was then absent for over a week with a mysterious injury that Mike Zimmer would only describe as a "little tweak." Eventually, Hunter started to be present at camp every day, but was without pads or a helmet and didn't participate at all in practice.

He has at least been stretching with the team this past week, and his return took another step on Friday. Hunter was seen doing some rehab exercises with strength coach Mark Uyeyama on a separate field.

When asked Friday if Hunter would be ready to play against the Packers in Week 1, Zimmer was noncommittal.

“Well, we hope so," Zimmer said. "We’ll just have to see.”

Danielle Hunter working with #Vikings strength coach Mark Uyeyama on side field. Hunter has not practiced in three weeks. Mike Zimmer said today he hopes to have Hunter vs Green Bay: “we’ll just have to see.” pic.twitter.com/yCKScFnopT

— Andrew Krammer (@Andrew_Krammer) September 4, 2020

There haven't been any details given by the team about the nature of Hunter's injury. Last week, Zimmer simply repeated the "little tweak" line. "Sometimes they take a long time," he said.

At this point, we almost certainly won't find anything out until the team's first injury report of the season comes out early next week. The Vikings would obviously like to have Hunter available to unleash alongside Yannick Ngakoue in a critical game against Green Bay on the 13th, but his status is very much up in the air.

My guess is that Hunter will be listed as questionable on the injury report, and that we won't know if he's playing or not until the morning of the game.

The two other players to miss practice on Friday were Armon Watts – who missed his second consecutive day – and Ezra Cleveland.

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