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EAGAN Womens George Iloka Jersey , Minn. — As a ninth-year veteran on an expiring contract with a team in a tight salary cap situation, tight end Kyle Rudolph has no guarantee he’ll get to continue his career with the Minnesota Vikings.More Vikings coveragePhotos of the Week: 7/21/19 – 7/27/19Rookie Bradbury is central figure to Vikings’ overhauled offensive lineVikings depth at cornerback being tested, Hughes still not clearedPlayers to watch at Minnesota Vikings 2019 training campTop Tweets: Vikings WR Diggs makes push for All-NFL Style TeamThat so-far-unfulfilled desire for clarity on his football future has not stopped him from making spring workouts a priority.“I could have easily skipped optional practice, but that’s not what a leader of this team does. These guys expect to see me out here each and every day, and I’m going to do that,” Rudolph said, later adding: “I don’t know what kind of example it would set if I said I wanted to be here, and I wasn’t here.”Carrying a $7.625 million charge against the cap, Rudolph has declined to take an outright pay cut. He confirmed Wednesday that the Vikings have offered him a five-year extension that would reduce his 2019 salary in exchange for a longer-term deal, but his agent, Brian Murphy, and Vikings chief negotiator Rob Brzezinski have not reached an agreement to date.If there’s a stalemate, Rudolph would be in danger of being traded or released. Such a move would not cost the team any dead money against the cap, but Rudolph said he didn’t anticipate the situation lingering until training camp.“They’re working extremely hard to get something done, and with that being said there’s plenty of other teams that are interested as well,” Rudolph said.To sign rookie center Garrett Bradbury, their first-round draft pick from North Carolina State, the Vikings had to restructure the contract of linebacker Eric Kendricks earlier this month.“We’re in a tough situation. Everybody knows that,” said Rudolph, a two-time Pro Bowl pick who was drafted by the Vikings in the second round in 2011.Rudolph was in New York over the weekend to receive an award for community service. He took a 6 a.m. flight on Tuesday for Minneapolis so he could arrive at the facility in time to be on the field for the first organized team practice of the spring.“I get to play a game for a living,” Rudolph said, later adding: “The business side will take care of itself. I don’t have to worry about that.”Coincidentally or not, the Vikings drafted tight end Irv Smith Jr. in the second round out of Alabama last month. But as long as they can find cap space for Rudolph they’ll certainly find room in the offense for both players in an attempt to give quarterback Kirk Cousins more viable options in the passing game.“It’s exciting. It’s an element that we’ve never had here in my nine years,” Rudolph said. “It forces defenses to play with three linebackers, and that allows us to control the game.”Said Cousins: “Kyle has done so many good things for so long, so to have him out there is a great sense of comfort. Then you add Irv’s youth and athleticism Dalvin Cook Jersey , that’s a great plus. No matter how you cut it, you’ve got five players who are eligible, and you want to get the best five.” Defensive lineman Jared Allen retired from the NFL in 2015 and wasn’t ready to give up on the competition he’d come to enjoy as a five-time All-Pro.His solution: The Olympics.The problem: He didn’t compete in any Olympic sports.Less than a year later, Allen and three other former NFL stars — none with any prior experience — are attempting to qualify for the U.S. national curling championships against players who have been throwing stones for most of their lives.It would be the first step toward competing in the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.“Every team in the NFL — whether you’re hot garbage or the defending Super Bowl champions — every coach come August says the same thing: ‘We’re trying to win the Super Bowl,'” Allen said. “We come from that mentality, where we set lofty goals.“Our short-term goals are continually to get better: fundamentals, strategy, sweeping. We know if we master these little things, it will take us a long way.”A 12-year NFL veteran who spent most of his career with the Chiefs and Vikings, Allen was lamenting the end of his playing days when a friend dared him to try an Olympic sport. Allen toyed with the idea of badminton but rejected it as too taxing.“We thought about curling: It was chill, and the winners have to buy the losers beer,” he said. “We thought it was a win-win.”He rounded up former Rams quarterback Marc Bulger and Titans linebacker Keith Bulluck and tackle Michael Roos to form a team; all were Pro Bowl selections during their NFL careers, and living in the Nashville, Tennessee, area.Adopting the name All-Pro Curling Team, they started from scratch in March and kept their plans under wraps until they felt like they had made enough progress.“We wanted the reaction when we got on the ice to be, ‘Oh, how long have you guys been doing this?” Allen said in a telephone interview after practicing on a converted hockey rink in Nashville. “We were serious. We didn’t want it to seem like it was just some media hype, or just trying to stay relevant.”The first test was in November, when Allen and Bulger — with two “regular” curlers — competed in the Curl Mesabi Classic in Northern Minnesota. Their first opponent: The gold medal-winning team from Pyeongchang led by four-time Olympian John Shuster.They lost 11-3, giving up five points in the sixth end.“Honestly, they were a little better than I had expected,” said Matt Hamilton, the second on that team. “All in all, Jared was technically pretty sound. But at the end of the day, I’ve seen thousands of curling shots and situations http://www.thevikingslockerroom.com/authentic-pat-elflein-jersey , and that is ultimately going to win us more games.”Although curling matches are often conceded when they are out of reach, the Olympians kept playing through the eighth (of 10) ends, to help the football players gain the experience they will need if they are to be more competitive. (If it’s any consolation for Allen’s crew, Shuster’s rink also scored a five-ender against Sweden in the gold medal match.)“We had one bad end, and we just kept playing with them. We just wanted to be a sponge,” Bulger said. “The key was they knew we were taking it seriously. It wasn’t just us saying, ‘We’re going to take over curling,’ kind of as a gimmick.“We hope to play them again,” he said, “when we’re better.”The All-Pros are back at it at the USA Men’s Challenge Round in Blaine, Minnesota, this weekend, where they are competing for one of four remaining spots in next month’s national championships. (Top teams such as Shuster’s have already qualified.)They got off to a rough start in their first match, falling 10-1 to Steve Birklid’s Seattle-based rink on Thursday night. But, by hopping into the sport early in the Olympic cycle, they have almost three more years before the team for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing is chosen.Hamilton confessed that he was put off at first about newcomers thinking they could go to the Olympics after four years in a sport he has worked at to master his entire life. But he also realized that the publicity will be good for curling, which has struggled to break out of its niche as an every-four-years curiosity.“If I really think I’m that good, I should be like, ‘Bring it on!'” Hamilton said in an email to The Associated Press from a competition in Japan. “How much they respected the game, though, is what made me realize they aren’t making a mockery. We just have some extremely athletic individuals who respect sport but have a need to compete in their blood. Can’t disrespect that!”100<button class="view-gallery">View Gallery</button> Gallery:View from the sidelines: NFL cheerleaders 2018Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports | Raj MehtaAll four football players agreed that the reception they’ve received from lifetime curlers has been decidedly different than the one that might welcome a curler who tried to break into the hyper-competitive NFL.“Oh, he’d get smashed,” Allen said. “We’d go out of our way to test his mettle, for sure.”Instead, the ex-NFLers found that the tight-knit but friendly community of curlers was eager to accept them. In their match against the Olympians, there was trash-talking — or banter Womens Harrison Smith Jersey , depending on whom you ask — and Hamilton even gave them some of his old curling gear.“I looked at their broom heads and I was disgusted. I was wondering why these former pro football players couldn’t afford new broom heads,” he said. “So I went into my curling bag and gave them some gently used ones before the game. That really surprised Jared, claiming nothing like that would ever fly in football.”Like many of those who experience curling only every four years, on TV, the football players saw the sweeping and the shouting and underestimated how hard it is. “We played football, but it’s a lot of muscles we didn’t use,” Bulger said.Sliding on the ice was also an adjustment, but the biggest challenge has been the strategy.When he first started watching, Bulger said, he would see curlers setting up protective stones called guards and thought they were missing their shots.“We just assumed that you throw to the button every time, and we learned that is not the game,” he said. “It’s like a novice chess player going against” a grandmaster.But their NFL experience did help in other ways, priming them with not just physical fitness, but also good practice habits, the ability to make decisions on the fly and to improve through film study and coaching.“Like any other sport you have to learn, try to figure out how to get better,” Bulluck said. “Playing football at a very high level, being one of the best at the position once upon a time, to get to that level in anything you do you have to be able to take coaching.”And, of course, they’re competitive.“The message is: We want to bring attention to it. We want to have fun with it,” Allen said. “But we’re dead serious about what we’re trying to accomplish.”