When Myles Price walked onto Soldier Field for his NFL debut last September, he did not see a moment that was too big. He saw his office.
A nationally televised division game in Chicago is an intimidating place for a rookie, especially an undrafted player about to field punts and kickoffs for the first time in the regular season. Price was not immune to the scale of it. He simply did not allow it to change how he saw himself.
“This is my office,” Price thought as he stepped onto the field, according to a team feature from last September.
The line has become a useful way to understand Price’s first NFL season. He made Minnesota’s roster because he played without hesitation. He emerged as one of the league’s busiest returners because he trusted his instincts. And when the costly mistakes that come with the position arrived, he showed enough resilience that the Vikings continued to put the ball back in his hands.
Now, a year later, Price’s office is getting bigger.
The Vikings know he can return kicks and punts. They know he can create hidden yardage and change field position. What they are beginning to learn is whether the player who made the roster as a return specialist can become a meaningful offensive receiver, too.
The answer is starting to look like yes.
Kevin O’Connell said this week that Price will have an offensive role as part of the group helping “offset those top three guys,” referring to Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and Jauan Jennings. The head coach grouped Price with Tai Felton, Minnesota’s 2025 third-round pick and another young receiver expected to contribute behind the starters.
For a player who took only 17 offensive snaps as a rookie, that is a meaningful change.
Price still has work to do. Felton remains an important part of Minnesota’s plans, and the Vikings have other young receivers competing for opportunities. Price also has to prove that the ball-security issues from his rookie season are behind him.
But the last month has been more than a collection of camp highlights. It has shown a player whose role is expanding because his game is expanding.
He won the job that got him here
The Vikings entered the 2025 offseason needing a returner.
Brandon Powell had left in free agency, leaving an opening that Minnesota did not intend to fill casually. The team signed veteran Rondale Moore, drafted Felton in the third round and brought in several undrafted rookie receivers, including Silas Bolden, Dontae Fleming and Price.
Price was not the most celebrated player in that group. He was an undrafted receiver coming off a college career split between Texas Tech and Indiana. He had returned punts in college, but he still had to prove he could handle the NFL version of the job.
He did.
Price earned the return roles during camp and the preseason, emerging from the most direct competition with Bolden and Moore. Moore’s season-ending knee injury in the preseason changed the landscape, but Price had already made his case. He was decisive, fearless and productive. The Vikings did not hand him the role because they lacked alternatives but because he was the best option.
His college résumé helps explain why Minnesota saw the possibility.
Price was one of only 22 FBS players since 1977 to finish a college career with at least 2,000 receiving yards, 200 rushing yards and 500 punt-return yards. Across 55 games, he produced 2,217 receiving yards, 270 rushing yards and 585 punt-return yards.
He was never simply a receiver who happened to field punts. He had spent years finding space with the ball in his hands, setting up blocks and making defenders miss.
Matt Daniels said Minnesota graded Price as a top-five punt returner before the 2025 draft. The surprise was his quick growth as a kickoff returner. Price had only three kickoff returns in college, but he rapidly became dangerous in a phase that demands different vision, timing and patience.
Daniels saw the traits immediately: tackle-breaking ability, field vision and a feel for how a return should develop.
Price, meanwhile, saw the opportunity in simpler terms.
“I knew when I got up here I would make the most of every opportunity,” he said during his rookie season. “I didn’t know when it was going to be. I didn’t know if it was going to be this year. I just knew at some point I was going to get an opportunity, and when I did, my goal was to never give the job back.”
He did not.
The returner made history, and mistakes
Price’s rookie production was historic for the franchise.
He set the Vikings’ single-season record with 1,777 combined kick- and punt-return yards. He returned 57 kickoffs for 1,479 yards, a 25.9-yard average, and added 298 yards on 30 punt returns.
Price rewrote parts of the Vikings’ return record book as a rookie, delivering several of the franchise’s best single-season return performances.
The numbers did not come from simply catching the ball and taking what was there.
In his NFL debut at Chicago, Price averaged 17 yards on four punt returns and added 49 yards on two kickoffs. A 22-yard punt return to midfield helped set up a Vikings touchdown. He moved with the style that had surfaced throughout camp, making decisions quickly and forcing defenders to react to him rather than the other way around.
Daniels praised Price’s ability to create on his own.
“You really appreciate the energy he brings as a returner,” Daniels said last season. “You see him hoppin’, skippin’, jumpin’, and you can see our sideline and see the guys really feed off his energy.”
O’Connell offered the clearest explanation for why Minnesota trusted an undrafted rookie with both return jobs.
“There’s not going to be a moment too big for Myles,” he remarked.
That confidence mattered because Price’s first season was not perfect.
Against Baltimore in Week 10, he fumbled on consecutive kickoff returns shortly after halftime. One of the turnovers gave the Ravens possession at Minnesota’s 23-yard line after they had taken a 12-10 lead. Baltimore scored six plays later, building a 19-10 advantage in a game it won 27-19.
Two weeks later, with Minnesota trailing Green Bay 10-6 early in the second half, Price muffed a punt near the Vikings’ goal line. The Packers recovered at the 5-yard line, a pivotal mistake in a 23-6 loss.
Price finished the season with four fumbles, three of them lost.
Returner can be a lonely position. The ball hangs in the air, the decision has to be immediate and every error is visible. A player can produce a season’s worth of field-position value and still be remembered for the one ball that gets away.
The Vikings did not let that happen to Price.
After the Baltimore game, O’Connell singled out Price in his postgame address, according to Daniels. Daniels said the organization wanted to ensure one difficult afternoon did not drain the confidence that had helped Price become a successful rookie.
Price was upset with himself. He also told himself he was still the same player. The Vikings agreed. They continued to trust him with both return roles, and he finished the season as one of the NFL’s most productive kickoff returners.
That does not erase the issue. Ball security remains part of Price’s job description, just as it is for every returner. It does show something important about the player and the team’s belief in him. Price can make mistakes without allowing them to make him tentative.
That is a difficult balance to maintain. A returner who plays too cautiously will not create explosive plays. A returner who plays recklessly can cost an offense possessions. Price is still learning where that line is.
The work that changed his second season
Price’s rookie value came from what happened after he caught the football.
His second-year development has been built on everything that comes before it.
He spent the offseason working with receiver trainer David Robinson, Price revealed on Thursday. A finger procedure limited some of his work catching footballs, so Price focused on footwork, route transitions and how quickly he could accelerate out of a break. Rather than drifting through the top of routes, he worked on getting out with urgency.
The work has shown up in his own evaluation.
“I put a lot of work in,” Price said after the Ravens practices. “When you see your hard work pay off, I think that’s the best feeling.”
He said he is “a whole lot further” in the offense than he was at this point last season. The difference is not only knowledge of the playbook. It is the freedom that knowledge creates.
When he is not second-guessing a call, an assignment or a route adjustment, he can play faster. That has been one of the clearest changes in camp.
Wes Phillips noted he had seen “a lot of growth” from Price after initially wondering where he might fit as a true receiver. Phillips pointed to better route transitions, reliable hands, quickness against press coverage and more speed than Price’s compact frame might suggest.
“You go into the offseason program, and you could tell right away that he’s been putting in work,” Phillips said.
O’Connell recently praised the “artwork” of Price’s development as a receiver: getting on edges, understanding releases, activating his quickness and change of direction, then using vertical speed.
That last element matters.
Jalen Nailor, last year’s WR3 and a legitimate downfield threat, signed with the Raiders in free agency. Minnesota replaced his place in the receiver hierarchy with Jennings, who brings a different kind of value as a physical blocker and chain-moving receiver.
Jefferson and Addison remain capable of stretching a defense. But Price gives Minnesota another smaller, fast-moving option who can attack a matchup, stress a defense horizontally or vertically and make the coverage account for him in a specific package.
He does not need to become the new WR3. He only needs to give the Vikings an element they would otherwise lack.
The proof is beginning to arrive
The camp reports have matched the coaches’ praise.
On July 30, with Cris Carter and Larry Fitzgerald watching practice, Price made a late adjustment on a deep Carson Wentz pass and held on inside the 10-yard line. He kept making plays throughout camp, but the preseason opener against the Giants gave the growth a more public form.
Price caught four passes for 51 yards and a touchdown.
First, he made a contested catch that became an explosive gain. Then he finished a scoring drive with a nearly one-handed touchdown grab from Wentz.
J.J. McCarthy called him “such a ball player” afterward.
Price carried that momentum into the Ravens joint practices. He made several catches with the second-team offense, then finished a one-minute period with a 40-yard touchdown from McCarthy.
O’Connell called it a phenomenal throw, catch, read and finish.
Price also drew a different kind of lesson from the two practices. He said they showed him how valuable he can be, but added that the offense is difficult to stop when all 11 players handle their assignments.
That answer says as much about his development as the touchdown did. Price is not trying to make the receiver room about himself. He is trying to become trustworthy within it.
“Whatever it is that they’re asking of me,” he said, “I try to make sure I do that to the best of my ability.”
If Minnesota needs speed, he will provide it. If it needs him to block, chip an edge defender or handle return duties, he wants to do that, too. The versatility is what can make him difficult to keep off the field.
A larger office
Price’s return ability remains essential. The Vikings may still ask him to handle both jobs. They also may need to build more depth at returner if his offensive role continues to grow.
That is not a problem the team expected from an undrafted rookie a year ago.
Minnesota signed Price because it needed help in the return game. He won the job, broke records and survived the kind of mistakes that can end a young player’s chance before it fully begins. Now he is forcing the Vikings to view him differently.
The player who entered the league as a returner is becoming a receiver with a role to claim, speed to offer and enough confidence to believe the work will continue to pay off.
Price once walked into Soldier Field and decided it was his office.
A year later, he is asking the Vikings for a bigger job.
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