The Minnesota Vikings take on the New York Giants in New Jersey on August 15 in a preseason showdown, and in the meantime, the club continues to determine the roster pecking order at training camp as it prepares for the regular season. Along the way, a trio of Vikings has come out of the woodwork to complicate preexisting assumptions about the depth chart in what can be coined a champagne problem.
Indeed, tight end Gavin Bartholomew, cornerback Charles Demmings, and wide receiver Tai Felton have the special sauce through nine days of camp.
Three Camp Risers Are Challenging Established Roles
Gavin Bartholomew Is Taking Back a Job He Never Got to Claim
Bartholomew missed his entire rookie season with a back injury. He returned to practice in December 2025, but Minnesota never activated him to the gameday roster. If you’re a casual Vikings fan and Bartholomew feels really new, he essentially is. In his stead, undrafted free agent Ben Yurosek stepped up last year and earned the TE3 job. It’s now Bartholomew versus Yurosek at training camp for the same job behind T.J. Hockenson and Josh Oliver, as Bartholomew is now healthy, catching passes, and potentially taking possession of the role he never received an opportunity to pursue in 2025.
The Athletic‘s Alec Lewis tweeted last week, “Semi-random Vikings camp takeaway, but I thought TE Gavin Bartholomew looked really good. Made two impressive over the middle catches. Moved well. First time really seeing him out there after back injury happened last year.”
A few days later, Lewis doubled down: “Not much Vikings QBs stuff from today’s practice, but I thought TE Gavin Bartholomew, CB Chuck Demmings and WR Dontae Fleming continued to really look good.”
Here’s some footage:
Former Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who personally drafted Bartholomew, said about him in 2025, “We think he can be a hybrid Y/F tight end for us. He’s got some route-running ability. We think he’s got a lot of ability in his body. His pro day showed a lot of that. We think he’s got a lot of lower-body strength to be somebody to help us in the run game and special teams. A good athlete. A good football player.”
Adofo-Mensah, now employed by the San Francisco 49ers, could be vindicated for the Bartholomew pick before it’s all said and done.
Charles Demmings Is Jumping the Cornerback Queue
Every day, there’s a new Demmings highlight at camp. The man is bringing to life people’s pre-camp predictions. Heading into the summer, fans and draftniks pounded the table for Demmings, claiming he had more juice than most rookie 5th-rounders. So far, that declaration is emphatically correct.
Defensive coordinator Brian Flores on Demmings earlier this week: “Chuck Dee is a very confident individual. He’s high energy, a great teammate, a hard worker. In those individual drills, you’ll see him working his footwork, hand placement, and then he tries to apply those in the group setting and team setting.”
“So he’s done a good job so far; just continued to improve on a daily basis.”
Demmings’s training camp has been so consistent and stuffed with highlights that one fan tweeted Thursday morning, “I’m starting to question if Isaiah Rodgers or James Pierre are going to start week 1.”
The rookie is also known for his pitbull-like mentality, recently telling reporters, “It’s never about the guy across from me. It’s all about me.”
For now, Demmings profiles as the Vikings’ CB4 in 2026, but don’t be surprised if that job title changes to CB2 or CB3 by season’s end. His ascension to date mandates that warning.
Several Demmings camp highlights are available on social media. Here’s one example:
Tai Felton Is Turning Speed into Receiver Craft
Few had a Felton breakout on their scorecards at training camp. The aforementioned Adofo-Mensah’s draft record was so poor that many had swept Felton under the rug as a wasted draft pick because he played so seldom on offense as a rookie.
Yet, Felton may have just needed time to bloom. He authored this gem on Monday:
Don’t forget Wednesday’s latest masterclass here.
Head coach Kevin O’Connell on Felton: ‘Everybody sees the one-handed catch, but I thought the route itself to get the separation that he did, his understanding of the details of things – – I think he has a better plan at the line of scrimmage this year.”
“When you get a young player that’s as fast and explosive as Tai is, it takes some time to understand defenders. They know the juice that he has. They’re not just going to let you have a free run. You’re going to have to have a plan.”
Felton must carve out targets behind Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and Jauan Jennings, but based on his daily camp flair, that doesn’t seem too far-fetched. With Jefferson and Addison in the mix for extensions next offseason and Jennings in Minnesota on a one-year deal, Felton may be auditioning for an enhanced role in 2027 as well.
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VikesNow Verdict: Bartholomew, Demmings, and Felton entered camp with modest expectations, but each is forcing Minnesota to reconsider an established role. None has secured a promotion, though their rise has made three previously predictable depth chart decisions more complicated.
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