2. Price-less UDFA impact
Sixteen games and 87 combined kick and punt returns for 1,777 yards.
For anyone, that’s an unbelievable impact. And for an undrafted free agent, it’s nearly unprecedented.
Two NFL players passed by in the draft have outshined Price in the return phase through 16 games in their first seasons: Chris Carr (1,938 return yards, 2005) and B.J. Sams (1,826, 2004). That’s it — the full list.
Price wasn’t perfect for the Vikings, but he was electric. He averaged 9.9 yards on an NFL-high 30 punt returns, good for the best average by a Vikings punt-return man since Marcus Sherels in 2018 (12.0; min. 10 returns). Also, Price logged more than 130 total return yards in seven games, smashing the old record by a Viking — Eddie Payton (1980) Percy Harvin (2009) and Cordarrelle Patterson (2013) each tallied four.
Price was a dual-threat, and he quickly established himself as one of the best such players in the league. Titans fourth-round rookie Chimere Dike is the standalone returner with more 130-plus-yard games than Price in 2025 (9).
“I can remember when ‘Hat’ (Special Teams Coordinator Matt Daniels) and D.G. (Assistant Special Teams Coach Dalmin Gibson) came to me pre-draft and saved some clips and made sure I got a chance to watch him, and then talked to him before kind of that undrafted free-agent process started,” O’Connell said of Price. “And he’s been everything we had hoped and more back there.
“Even that return that he got hurt on the other day, there was a little space there. And we had talked a lot about not only winning the special teams phase in that game, but had a chance for one right there,” O’Connell continued. “Unfortunately, those things happen from time-to-time, but it doesn’t take away from anything Myles has been able to accomplish and (I) feel really strongly about him and his future — not only just as a returner, but just as he continues to grow and get better and better at the receiver position and compete to get on the field there as well.”
Beyond his featured returner role, Price logged 17 snaps on offense as a rookie, with 10 coming in Week 3 against Cincinnati.
