Barr's Usage

The Vikings’ 2014 first-round pick had given his agent the go-ahead to work out a contract with the New York Jets but Barr quickly felt he’d made a huge mistake. He doubled back and re-signed with the Vikings despite taking less money than he would have earned in The Big Apple.

“I was trying to convince myself of something that I knew in my heart didn’t feel right,” Barr explained.

Last year we got a window into what life would have looked like if Barr had left. In Week 2 against the Indianapolis Colts, he suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery and he was lost for the remainder of the season. Eric Kendricks played alongside Eric Wilson, who filled in admirably but wasn’t the same type of all-around player as Barr.

Kendricks and Barr have been two centerpieces of the Vikings’ defense for nearly the entirety of the Mike Zimmer era. Barr was Zimmer’s first draft pick, taken ninth overall in 2014 and Kendricks was picked in the second round of the 2015 draft. You’d be hard pressed to find any two players at one position that have shared the field as much as they did from 2015-2019. Before last season, Kendricks and Barr both played over 800 snaps in each of those seasons. In 2017 and 2019, they both cleared 1,000 plays.

“It’s always a great time,” Kendricks said. “Me and Anthony have been playing shoot, I think we talked about, 10 years at this point together. So it’s a blessing to play with him. I’m excited to continue another year with him. Our coach in college [at UCLA], I remember him having a meeting and being like, ‘Hey take advantage of this opportunity. You’ll never get to play again together.’ So here we are playing another season together. So I’m just blessed for the opportunity. Obviously we can’t control what happened last year but we can look forward to this year.’’

They’ve been through everything together, from Blair’s miss in the playoffs to Teddy’s injury to Zimmer’s eye surgery to the Minneapolis Miracle to the 2018 disappointment to walking off against the Saints in the Superdome. From ice storms to the murder of George Floyd.

Along the way, Barr has made the Pro Bowl four times and Kendricks was recognized as All-Pro in 2019. They have become active in the Twin Cities community — Kendricks was the Vikings’ Walter Payton Man of the Year finalist last year and Barr’s Raising The Barr foundation supports single parents. They have also become close friends.

“It’s been special, man, we’re very fortunate to have the opportunity to play together so long. I think the relationship has evolved just like any relationship,” Barr said. “We really depend on one another. Off the field, on the field we hold each other accountable in all aspects of life. I’m just very fortunate and blessed to call him a friend.”

As important as they are to the Vikings’ success on defense, there’s a real possibility that this could be the final season in which Barr and Kendricks play together.

Barr already re-worked his contract this offseason to stick around for at least one more year.

“I kind of didn't want to go out like that – I didn’t want my last game being the one in which I got hurt and then missing an entire year,” Barr said of his decision to restructure. “I didn't want that to be my last memory as a Minnesota Viking, so that played a big factor in returning and taking the pay-cut to be back with this organization.”


The result of the restructure is that Barr’s contract is up after this season.

Barr could very well decide that he wants to be a Viking for life and sign another contract but things might be different the second time around. When Barr returned in 2019 the the Vikings were trying to keep the band together and maintain the foundation of the 2017 defense that led them to a 13-3 season. This year the Vikings signed a number of players on defense to short-term contracts with the goal of quickly bouncing back from last year’s 29th ranking in points allowed.

After 2021, the team may have to make difficult decisions on who they’re keeping going forward and it’s hard to know if the 29-year-old linebacker will be one of those players. It’s difficult to project how Barr will feel one year from now, too. If the landscape is different, he might want to look elsewhere for one more big contract or a shot at a Super Bowl.

If this indeed it for Barr-Kendricks, it will be the last chance for Vikings fans to appreciate the synergy of the two linebackers. The team has been nearly begging for years for media and fans to understand Barr’s value. At least five different times this offseason someone has been quoted saying that nobody understands how important Barr is to the operation. Mike Zimmer and co-defensive coordinator Adam Zimmer (similarly) explained how they make each other better.

“[Barr] calls the defense, he gets everybody lined up,” Adam Zimmer said. “I think it makes life a lot easier on Eric Kendricks, where Kendricks likes to just play ball -- find ball, see ball, get ball. Anthony allows him to do that more instead of having to worry about 'Oh, I gotta get the front set, I gotta get the pressure set, I gotta alert this, alert that.’”

“They communicate so well,” Mike Zimmer said. “Eric talks about being able to pass things off and his job in coverage is probably a little harder than Anthony’s, you know, the middle linebacker. They just communicate and they’re both really really smart. Barr usually handles most of the getting lined up and Kendricks and he likes to see-ball-get-ball.’’

While Kendricks was once compared by Mike Zimmer to someone who drank too much coffee, Barr is calm and in control.

“When things are scrambling around, often times he’s the voice of reason,” Harrison Smith said of Barr.

It's not a big deal to miss one week. Anthony Barr sat out the Minnesota Vikings’ 27-24 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals and most of camp with a knee injury. Even if Barr would have made the difference, it’s just one game. But what we know about that injury and the problems Barr has experienced over the last few years could be cause for alarm. Considering how much the Vikings struggle with knees, it makes sense to take a moment to learn about them.

In Barr’s rookie season, he suffered a “slight tear” in his meniscus in December. Nobody thought much of it since the Vikings had just been eliminated from playoff contention with a loss in Detroit. Barr was ready in plenty of time to play the 2015 season, where he would earn Pro Bowl and second-team All-Pro honors. It’s behind him, right? Perhaps not.

Recall a few weeks ago, when Mike Zimmer was commenting on Irv Smith Jr.’s season-ending meniscus surgery. When talking about it, Zimmer mentioned that the season-ending version of the surgery was the best idea for Smith’s future health and career. When you suffer a slight meniscus tear, there are a few options.

The meniscus is a fairly large sheet of tough, rubbery cartilage that absorbs shock in the knee when you jump or walk or do basically anything on your legs. Think of it as your leg’s brake pad. Meniscus tears can be pretty common in a sport like football, where your legs are constantly absorbing impact and stress. So if that sheet of cartilage is torn, you can do two things. You can either cut out the damaged bits (that’s called a meniscectomy) or try to repair that damage. A full replacement is possible as well, but that’s rare.

Cutting out the damaged bits is a lot easier. It’s usually an arthroscopic procedure, making the recovery time shorter than a more invasive open surgery. The problem is fairly intuitive: You have less meniscus now. With less cartilage (a smaller brake pad), you’re not going to be able to absorb as much shock over time. With less cartilage to do the work, the cartilage will degenerate faster. Knee degeneration is also known as arthritis. To be fair, the severity of this is debated in the medical community.

The benefit of a full repair is that you keep all that cartilage. It’s a more invasive surgery, which makes for a longer recovery time but proves to have more long-term appeal. Once you’ve recovered from a meniscus repair, things in your knee return to more or less normal. That’s the basic decision that the surgeon had to make with Smith’s knee. He chose the long-term option.

That brings us back to Barr, who also had a medical procedure on his meniscus in 2014. It does not appear to be public information which procedure he had, so we can only make an educated guess. At the time, Mike Zimmer called the tear a “slight” one and the procedure a “minor” one. That implies an arthroscopic meniscectomy, but we can’t be sure. If it is the less invasive trim, however, that could have long-term complications down the road. Here we are, seven years later, down the road.

All is not lost. Some of the most notable athletic achievements in history were achieved on arthritic legs. The list includes Wayne Gretzky, Phil Mickelson, and even Dorothy Hamill. Arthritis is a common issue with common treatments. The problems are with both pain and a loss of flexibility. Both stem from inflammation around all that degenerated cartilage, which means anti-inflammatories can help. Over-the-counter drugs like Advil may not pack enough punch, so NFL teams often use Toradol or cortisone shots.

Toradol is a suped-up anti-inflammatory drug, like Advil on steroids that you inject. It only has minor side effects in single uses, but it can damage someone’s liver or cause internal bleeding long-term. This offseason, the NFL urged players to curb their use of Toradol as a general painkiller over the course of the season. Albert Haynesworth recently had a kidney transplant, and he blames Toradol for needing one. If you’re willing to accept all that risk, Toradol injections can help manage the pain and stiffness caused by an arthritic knee.

Cortisone shots are a much more common treatment for arthritic pain and inflammation. But it’s not without its caveats. Repeated cortisone shots could damage the cartilage around the injection site. That’s why they’re typically a one-time solution, but as with all things, the NFL tends to overdo it. These are difficult decisions for Barr to make.

Assuming his knee is arthritic, we’re not waiting on it to heal per se. We’re waiting on some swelling to go down, and Barr will probably play when he is at a point where he can manage the pain and stiffness. As for a timetable, that would explain why the Vikings have behaved optimistically (i.e., they declined to put Barr on short-term IR). The question is how long Barr can play for and if he will be the same athlete he was when we last saw him.

More importantly, Barr will have to choose between an ability to play football and his long-term health. Barr will likely have to have a knee replacement or otherwise major surgery at some point in his life. That date could even come before he’s ready to hang up his cleats. As for the short term, he’ll have to manage arthritic pain for the rest of his career. If Barr and his trainers decide that it’s not worth the long-term risk, it would be difficult to blame him.