A day after Vikings coach Brad Childress said he expected to have wide receiver Percy Harvin back on the practice field, Childress now says he’s increasingly concerned about how migraine headaches are affecting his star rookie.
“He’s been having them for a good period of time,” Childress said today. “It’s important for us to get some kind of baseline if we can, doctor-wise, and yet still know that [the migraines] are fairly unpredictable.”
Harvin was on the field for a walk-through but was not on the field today for the portion of practice that is open to the media.
Harvin has had migraines for most of his life, but Childress acknowledged that the team didn’t realize the extent to which migraines would affect Harvin when they made him their first-round draft pick in April.
"[We] really didn’t. [We] just knew that it said migraine headaches on the scouting report,” Childress said. “Just so we’re clear, it wouldn’t have been a disqualifier or anything like that. But I think anybody that reads the scouting report, I don’t know that we look into it and say, ‘Oh, boy, to what extent?’ Not to the point where he’s missed a bunch of games or anything like that. We’ll be wiser next time and, again, it’s just something that we have to learn and deal with.”
The Vikings don’t yet know whether Harvin will be able to deal with his migraines well enough to play in the Vikings’ Sunday night game against the Carolina Panthers.