Vikings announce reunion with Everson Griffen, who has re-signed with the squad for 2021 after positive training

Everson Griffen returns home. He and the Minnesota Vikings couldn’t agree on his future with the club after the 2019 season, but, two years later, he reunited with them after training with the team last week. The team announcement Griffen signs on his official Twitter account.

This solves a major need for the Vikings, after losing Yannick Ngakoue to the Las Vegas Raiders in free agency. Griffen will join Sheldon Richardson to return to the Vikings’ defensive front this season.

On paper, this certainly reinforces the unit, the one titled by Danielle Hunter and Dalvin Tomlinson, the latter having also been acquired this year. [via free agency]; with Richardson, Griffen and Michael Pierce, so it looks like things are falling into place for the new look of Mike Zimmer’s pass rush unit.

Griffen negotiated a clause in his previous contract with the Vikings that allowed for the cancellation of the last three years of his contract if two criteria were met. It is expected to play in at least 57% of snaps in 2019 first and deliver a minimum of six bags in the process. He would end the season with 15 starts and eight sacks to his name, giving him the right to opt out of the rest of his contract and that’s exactly what he did. The $ 58 million four-year extension signed in 2017 initially stalled him until the 2022 season, and he agreed to a restructuring of the deal in 2019 – a move that in itself foreshadowed what was going to happen.

The quadruple Pro Bowler then signed with the Dallas Cowboys, but it didn’t go well, leading them to trade him to the Detroit Lions just before the NFL deadline in October. He would fare a little better at Motor City – registering 3.5 sacks – but did not sign again with the Lions once the season was over.

Instead, while he’ll stay in the familiar NFC North, it’ll be in an equally familiar Vikings uniform. Griffen spent 10 seasons in Minnesota before leaving for what he believed to be greener pastures, but it wasn’t.

It’s time for the Vikings to make their debut in NFC North. Can Kirk Cousins, Dalvin Cook and Justin Jefferson get the job done? Download the CBS Sports app to get the latest titles from our team of NFL experts. If you’ve already downloaded the CBS Sports app, Prefer The Vikings right now to get all the Minnesota headlines.