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The Vikings are in the unusual situation of having three quarterbacks who could start on a lot of teams, with Case Keenum as their starter, Sam Bradford as Keenum’s backup, and Teddy Bridgewater as the third-stringer who was inactive on Sunday. But those three aren’t the only quarterbacks in Minnesota.

When the Vikings activated Bradford, they also kept quarterback Kyle Sloter, an undrafted rookie from Northern Colorado, on the 53-player roster. That’s very unusual, as many teams don’t even keep three quarterbacks on their rosters, let alone four. But it’s a sign of how much promise the Vikings think Sloter has that they don’t want to release him from their roster now and risk some other team signing him.

As Vikings radio announcer Paul Allen noted this morning on PFT Live, when the Vikings originally signed Sloter to the practice squad in September, they paid him significantly more than practice-squad players typically get paid because they wanted him to choose Minnesota over other practice-squad offers. That paid off when Bradford and Bridgewater were both hurt and Sloter was available to be called up to the 53-player roster.

And with Keenum, Bradford and Bridgewater all in the last years of their contracts, it’s easy to picture the Vikings only keeping one of them in 2018 and Sloter being promoted to No. 2. There’s precedent to that working out well: In 2000, the Patriots kept four quarterbacks, including fourth-string rookie Tom Brady. In 2001 he was promoted to second string, then after he took over for the injured Drew Bledsoe, Brady led the Patriots to the Super Bowl.