Seeing Ivan Pace on the bench wasn’t too surprising, though it may have been discouraging for a pile of fans.
For a little while, Minnesota has been shifting away from the blitzing specialist, limiting his work even as he remained in the starting lineup. On Sunday, the Vikings finally pulled the plug on the UDFA within Brian Flores’s starting group. Blake Cashman and Eric Wilson, a pair of veterans, soaked up the snaps while Pace hung around within a special teams job.
The Ivan Pace Benching
Start off with a simple reality: Pace saw his playing time diminish in 2024.
The (mostly) healthy Vikings defense marched through what was a very impressive 2024 season. Blake Cashman functioned as the LB1, earning the lion’s share of the snaps. The FA newcomer saw his snaps coming in at 895 by the end of the season, working out to 94% of the plays within his fourteen games. Meanwhile, Pace found himself at 414 snaps, a total that amounts to 59% of the snaps within the linebacker’s eleven games.
Very clearly, the Vikings had a larger workload for Cashman. Added versatility, superior pass coverage abilities, and relaying the play call appear to be the reasons why the LB1 was the LB1.
Fast forward into 2025 and something similar is occurring.
Yet again, Ivan Pace has been forced to take a backseat. The issue at this stage is that he’s doing so due to the presence of Cashman and Eric Wilson.
By elevating Wilson, Flores gets to lean into maximum creativity and chaos. Flores’s reputation is to be aggressive; he has done much to earn that description. So much of what he’s trying to accomplish, though, rests in making the offense uncomfortable. Sometimes, achieving that goal means sending the house. At other times, it’s having personnel on the field that can do pretty much anything.
Wilson, someone capable of offering sturdy pass coverage and disruptive blitzes, allows Flores to get more unpredictable with the calls.
During the bye, a piece on PurplePTSD discussed the possibility of rolling with Wilson over Pace:
The veteran has been collecting the play call from Brian Flores since Blake Cashman went down. The suggestion is that Minnesota’s DC sees higher level communication abilities in Wilson over Ivan Pace, someone who has seen his young career align perfectly with Flores’s time in Minnesota (2023-2025).
Pace is an attacking linebacker who complements Cashman well. If, however, the desire is to lean into a more well-rounded ‘backer twosome following the return of the LB1, then Wilson sticking around as the LB2 may be the move.
In the end, sticking with Wilson ended up being the decision. He rewarded Minnesota with 6 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 1 QB hit, and 1 tackle for loss. Wilson played 42 snaps on defense (84%) — Cashman came in at 50, working out to 100% of the time.
Ivan Pace finished his day with zero snaps on defense.
The young linebacker was involved on special teams, getting into 21 plays for Matt Daniels.
Moving forward, Pace needs to focus on rounding out his game. Eliminate the missed tackles and don’t get scorched in coverage. It’s okay if he’ll never mirror prime Eric Kendricks (absolute stud) running with Davante Adams in coverage, but Pace can’t be a huge liability. He’s still only 24, so there’s room to develop and grow.
Ivan Pace faces a fairly grim future in Minnesota, largely due to how poor the upcoming salary cap situation is.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference helped with this piece.
