With guidance from Vikings veterans and Brian Flores, Dallas Turner is maturing into a future ‘elite player’

There’s an eight-year age difference between Vikings locker neighbors Dallas Turner and Andrew Van Ginkel.

It’s one of the things Turner, the 21-year-old rookie outside linebacker, said Wednesday has been the biggest adjustment from college to the NFL.

There’s also 27-year-old Jonathan Greenard a few lockers down, and 30-year-old Jihad Ward in the vicinity.

“I was always the youngest in my family with all my cousins, so I’m kind of used to that stuff,” Turner said. “It’s definitely a lot of adjustments, but I feel like, if you’re built for it, you’re built for it.”

Turner, a first-round draft pick out of Alabama, showed he is built for it as a young, backup contributor at a deep position on the Vikings roster during their 42-21 win over the Falcons.

He tied his season high with three tackles and landed a hit on Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins in 26 snaps (35%) played. After the game, Turner told the Minnesota Star Tribune he felt he was “starting to get it.”

Even after a day that featured a handful of standout performances from young players, particularly on defense, Turner’s play attracted unprompted praise Monday from Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell.

“I thought Dallas Turner was really active, and you felt the athleticism and the juice,” O’Connell said while answering a question about fellow rookie outside linebacker Gabe Murphy, who made his NFL debut.

Turner said the most helpful advice he’s received from older teammates in his rookie year was something he didn’t feel applied to him at first.

Never get bored with the little things, veteran peers told him. Everything has to be consistent and intentional.

That’s easy to do the first few months in the building, when everything is shiny and new. Get to December, though, and there can be monotony.

Turner noted how much more intentional walk-throughs are in the NFL compared to college and the fact that pro teams spend less time in full pads as examples of when it’s important to be on top of the little things.

Van Ginkel called it being a sponge, able to soak up even the smallest of details each week within schemes and game plans.

He said he’s seen Turner’s growth through the way he attacks practice and in the questions he asks while assessing film.

“As he continues to understand the game, understand Flo’s defense and how we’re trying to attack offenses — there’s so many layers to this [Brian] Flores defense,” Van Ginkel said. “He’s getting the hang of it, and when he gets full grasp of it, he’s gonna be an elite player.”

Flores himself has also been crucial to Turner’s growth.

This time of year, when rookies enter the months of the calendar they aren’t used to playing in — even with the college postseason experience Turner has from Alabama — Flores makes a point of checking in with them one-on-one.

Flores said Tuesday that he and Turner met individually on multiple occasions last week.

Turner was already at TCO Performance Center when the text came in from Flores saying he was coming by and wanted to chat.

“I think it’s important for young guys to get on a routine,” Flores said. “I think it’s important for everyone to get on a routine just so you can kind of go back and tweak it week to week and say, ‘That helped me, that didn’t help me.’

“So the goal there was just, hey, over the course of this last end of the season, let’s make sure we’ve got really the right routine across the board.”

Sleep and wake times, tweaking activities to different days of the week and looking at what time of day players are lifting are some of the things Flores said he evaluates with young players.

The focus of the conversation, Turner said, was longevity. What habits could he build now that will set him up to someday be the veteran locker neighbor that Van Ginkel is to him?

“In 15 years, we’re looking back laughing at the conversation,” Turner said of his chat with Flores.

Turner’s not all alone, though. His position group has two other rookies, Murphy and Bo Richter.

Richter said that it’s “hard to be a rookie by yourself” and that the three having each other to compete against has been “great.”

Richter played six snaps at linebacker against the Falcons. Murphy played 28, the most among the three rookies.

It brings another level of camaraderie and allows for some commiseration about the “rookie treatment,” which Turner said remains the same regardless of how you’re playing.

They have one another, but they also are plenty comfortable looking to their veteran teammates and being the sponge Van Ginkel encourages them to be.

“Just seeing us on the field together is kind of crazy. Young dudes taking over,” Turner said with a laugh. “It was definitely a good sign. But all we can do is sit back and learn and listen. A lot of the young guys here have the same thing in common: They are very eager to learn and are very hungry to better themselves as a player.”

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