WR Childs tore patellar tendons in both knees

Rookie receiver Greg Childs tore the patellar tendon in both knees during Saturday night’s scrimmage, surely ending his season and setting up surgery in the coming days.

The Vikings announced the severity of Greg Childs’ injury – torn patellar tendons in both knees.

The injury happened on the second-from-last play during Saturday’s night intrasquad scrimmage in Blakeslee Field in Mankato. The play was a long bomb from quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson. Childs leaped to catch the pass with defensive back Corey Gatewood behind him. Both players jumped – Childs to catch it and Gatewood attempting to deflect it. Childs came down in a strange position, his right leg hitting the ground first and buckling and his left knee taking the full load of his weight when came down.

The 2012 fourth-round draft pick will have surgery in the coming days and is expected to be placed on season-ending injured reserve. He was expected to have a contributing role in the team’s receiving corps, especially given the three-game suspension for receiver Jerome Simpson to start the season.

It’s not the first time Childs has suffered a torn patellar tendon.

He was viewed as one of the top wide receivers in the country entering his junior season at Arkansas, but tore the patellar tendon in his right knee and missed the rest of the season. Once viewed as a first-round pick, he struggled in his return to the Razorbacks in 2011 and, given his lackluster season, he dropped all the way to the fourth round and the Vikings. He also missed out on a lot of the offseason workout program after suffering a calf strain during the rookie minicamp in May.

“You hate to see any player go down for any reason,” Vikings coach Leslie Frazier said after Saturday’s scrimmage, before the severity of the injury had been diagnosed. Frazier was also a victim of a career-ending knee injury during the Bears’ Super Bowl win over New England at the end of the 1985 season. “Greg has struggled with injury, as we all know, coming out of college.”

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