Vikings wide receiver Greg Childs said this spring that he wanted to be the kind of guy that made a return from torn patellar tendons in both knees at the same time believable, but his fantasy isn’t ready to become reality just yet.
The Vikings announced Tuesday that Childs has been moved to the reserve PUP list, which means he won’t be able to practice or play with the team until after their first six games of the regular season. Childs has spent all summer on the active PUP list, which is a prerequisite to going on the regular season version of the list as players are not permitted to go on the list once they’ve participated in a practice.
Such players also count against the 90-man roster in the preseason, but they don’t count against the roster once on reserve PUP. As a result, the Vikings are now down to 75 players ahead of Tuesday afternoon’s deadline.
There’s no history of anyone making it back from the double whammy that Childs is trying to overcome, so it is a decidedly uphill climb for the 2012 fourth-round pick more than a year after initially suffering the injury.