Vikings rookie edge rusher Dallas Turner has been molded for this moment

Dallas Turner ran around in team-issued New York Jets shorts and shirts when he was a kid growing up in South Florida.

Some of that Jets gear came from the same locker room shared in 2009 by receiver Wallace Wright, Turner’s cousin, and a backup quarterback named Kevin O’Connell. The NFL inspiration provided by Wright was an early push for Turner, setting in motion a path where his freakishly athletic talent would commit to football over a promising start in basketball. That path has led the rookie edge rusher to the Vikings and O’Connell.

Turner was a standout small forward in high school, eventually dunking his way to a Team USA invitational minicamp with future NBA players like Paolo Banchero and Scottie Barnes. His father, Delon, played professionally overseas and brought his two young sons to watch his pro-am pickup games.

But Turner gravitated to the gridiron from an early age.

“I’m the only 6- or 7-year-old out there with NFL-issued apparel,” Turner told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “That really pushed my direction into the sport of football.”

Turner, selected by the Vikings seven spots after quarterback J.J. McCarthy in the first round of the NFL draft in April, has been molded for this moment by the pressure cookers that are South Florida youth football and Alabama college football. He thrived under coaches Nick Saban and Jason Taylor, the former NFL Defensive Player of the Year, leaving those around him with little concern about how he’ll transition to the grandest stage.

“He has stood out on every level he’s played on,” Delon Turner said. “He’s played a ton of NFL guys, so they just kind of feed into each other, follow each other and push each other to get to that level.”

Before he hunted quarterbacks, Dallas Turner was a heat-seeking running back for the West Pine Panthers youth football team in Pembroke Pines, Fla.

“But I always saw myself playing defense, because of how physical I’d play,” Turner said.

Wright, his cousin, would go to Turner’s games and tell him, “Hey, man, when you’re in the open like that, run to the end zone instead of trying to run into somebody and run them over.”

Turner said he played various skill positions until eighth grade, when Pat Surtain, the former All-Pro NFL cornerback who was then the head coach at American Heritage School, asked to see Turner run a pass-rushing drill.

“I guess I did a little move he liked,” Turner said, “and it was no looking back.”

Turner quickly became known around the area as the “next Brian Burns,” said Delon Turner, referring to the Giants star pass rusher, who was a senior when Dallas was in seventh grade at American Heritage, a K-12 program that Turner attended from the beginning.

On Sunday, Turner and Burns will be on opposite sidelines for the season opener at MetLife Stadium. One of their former coaches, American Heritage assistant head coach Daryl Porter, will watch proudly.

“Those guys are just freakish,” said Porter, a former NFL safety. “You don’t find those guys often. Someone who can bend and be very in tune with how to play defensive end. Dallas can jump out of the gym, and Burns is Spider-Man for real.”

Turner became a two-time Broward County Defensive Player of the Year in football. At this year’s NFL scouting combine, Turner ran the fastest 40-yard dash (4.46 seconds) and jumped the highest (40.5 inches) among all edge rushers.

Porter said he thought Turner could have gone pro in basketball, recalling “windmill dunks” in high school that screamed NBA potential. The love of basketball runs in the family. A photo of Dallas’ Team USA minicamp group, which included former Minnehaha Academy star and Orlando Magic guard Jalen Suggs, rests on the Turner family mantle. His younger brother, Denver, just enrolled to play basketball at IMG Academy, a Florida high school built to craft D-I athletes. Delon played at Florida A&M and spent 11 years touring Europe in professional leagues.

“You saw he was a freakish athlete,” Porter said. “It was really only himself standing in his way.”

As a senior in high school, Dallas made an important decision to take his talent to a new setting: St. Thomas Aquinas, where Taylor, a former All-Pro pass rusher for the Dolphins, was the defensive coordinator.

“Taylor took him under his wing,” Delon Turner said. “If you can learn from one of the best to ever do it, why not him? And I think they both clicked and fed into each other, and he really pushed Dallas to go to another level.”

Dallas Turner was a coveted five-star prospect who made the controversial decision to leave South Florida and the University of Miami, where Taylor now coaches, for the NFL pipeline at Alabama. He joined a loaded edge rusher group led by Will Anderson Jr., who was drafted No. 3 overall by the Texans in 2023.

But just six games into Turner’s first SEC campaign, he was vaulted into the starting lineup because of injuries. Before the game, Saban called Taylor to get his thoughts on starting the 18-year-old Dallas.

“[Taylor] told him, ‘Yeah, I groomed him, why not?’ ” Delon Turner recalled.

Quick adjustments are necessary under Saban, the demanding champion considered the best college football coach of all time. Turner said those who could and couldn’t handle the high standards were immediately exposed.

“That means we practice at the hottest time of the day so we could withstand any conditions,” Turner said. “Practices were long and hard, but that made us.”

Alabama’s coaches let players uphold the standard, naming Turner a team captain during his final, SEC Defensive Player of the Year season.

“Very player-led,” Turner said. “Someone would mess up in practice, it’d look real bad, the players would be the ones to say things first before the coaches.”

Turner’s tear through college football’s toughest conference included 10 sacks in 14 games last season, including one on McCarthy in the national championship game. He built a reputation as a punishing hitter, famously stepping over the line with a helmet-to-helmet hit on LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels that was flagged last fall.

“That is just how I play,” Turner said. “I don’t intend to be dirty or nothing like that on my hits. I just play between the whistles. I just play 100 percent every game.”

Turner’s NFL dream took longer than expected. He was the third defender selected, but his wait lasted until the 17th overall pick due to the NFL’s offensive arms race. A record 14 straight offensive players were selected to begin the draft.

The Vikings waited long enough. They traded up six spots to add one of their highest-ranked pass rushers. When Turner got the call from the Vikings draft room, he was told, “Make sure I’m ready to rush the passer as soon as I get off the plane.”

Turner practiced varied roles during his first training camp, aligning against guards as well as offensive tackles. With McCarthy out for the season with a knee injury, Turner is the first-round pick who can make the quickest impact for the Vikings. He’s expected to grow into a full-time starter for defensive coordinator Brian Flores, but Turner will begin as a reserve behind veteran edge rushers Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel.

“We’ve got a role envisioned for Dallas, and that changes,” Flores said. “If he’s got the hot hand, we’ll leave him in. If it’s what we expected, then we’ll keep it as we planned.”

Turner hasn’t been a typical quiet rookie, said left tackle Christian Darrisaw. He’s been vocal with veteran players on both sides of the ball, looking for tips wherever he can.

“Nothing but positives,” Flores said. “He’s like a sponge in that group as far as extracting information and finding ways to apply that with his skillset. … They’re great with him, telling him, ‘Dallas, you can do X, Y, Z, go do it.’ And normally he gets it done.”

If Turner is ready to make the NFL leap, how high can he go?

“I just want to win. That’s my main goal in Minnesota,” Turner said. “We’re not a superstar or a one-man show type of defense. Everybody is going to make their plays. In the type of style we run, somebody is going to make a play. Really just go out there and have fun with my teammates: running around and hitting people.”

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