No, the Vikings Are Not in Salary Cap Hell.
Mitchel Massman
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Over and over again, you hear pundits and people on the internet talk about the salary cap hell the Vikings possess in 2023. You might open up Over the Cap and gasp and the giant negative number. Oh no! What will they do to get out of this situation?
If this is you, take a breath and relax. They are not in salary cap hell, and there is a plan.
Do you really think that when they were constructing these contracts, they didn’t look to the future? I promise you Kwes Adofo-Mensah and Rob Brzezinski were fully aware of the pending situation.
That said, they are obviously not in as favorable a position as some teams. You can see teams like the Bears and Falcons with their $93.5 million and $56.5 million, respectively, in cap space. Of course, it would be great for the Vikings to have this much to spend. However, they are not in nearly as dire of situations as the Bears and Falcons.
The Bears decimated their roster and are essentially building a team from scratch. Could that work? Maybe, but you never really know.
The Vikings, on the other hand, have every single primary piece of their offense returning in 2023. That is an offense that ranked 7th in total yards per game and 8th in points per game. Yes, there are holes on defense that need to be addressed, and Adofo-Mensah will make enough cap space to address those issues.
One of the first things on that list will be restructuring Adam Thielen, which is already in the works as we speak.
Some other contract negotiations to watch are Harrison Smith, Kirk Cousins, Dalvin Cook, Danielle Hunter, TJ Hockenson, and Brian O’Neill. Between all these guys, the team could potentially create as much as $70 million in cap space, leaving the team with $46 million to spend on free agency and draft picks.
Simply push this year’s money into future years.
Can You Keep Pushing the Salary Cap into the Future?
One of the first things people say regarding contract negotiations is that you can’t keep pushing salary cap into the future. This isn’t necessarily the whole truth.
While it is true that, eventually, you will have to pay the piper, it is not as scary of a thought when you actually start doing the math.
First, the salary cap will be increasing at a healthy rate for the foreseeable future. This was made clear when the NFL starting sign massive media rights contracts. Additionally, sports gambling is becoming legal in more states, inevitably leading to more money from ad revenue flowing to the NFL.
You can even see estimated base salary caps on Over the Cap. Here is a quick breakdown:
- 2023 – $224,800,000
- 2024 – $256,000,000
- 2025 – $282,000,000
- 2026 – $308,000,000
Now that we can see how dramatically the salary cap will rise in future years, we can start thinking about contracts. The first thing I ask you to do is stop thinking about overall dollars and think more about the percentage of cap space.
For instance, cutting Adam Thielen from the team would cost about $13.5 million in dead cap, which equals 6% of the total cap space available. That is a lot of cap space, right?
However, if you could push that money into 2024 and then take a dead cap hit, that would decrease the overall percentage to 5.27%. Still quite a bit, but not as much. But you can see that that percentage would get smaller over time.
So why not keep pushing things into future years? Yes, you will have to pay it eventually, but the overall cap percentage used will be reduced.
This is also why you shouldn’t freak out when Justin Jefferson signs a mega deal worth $30 million per year. It really won’t look that bad 3 or 4 years from now.
Keep pushing the money down the line.
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Mitch Massman is a lifelong Vikings fan. His first heartbreak was the 1998 NFC championship game. His full-time job is as an economic development professional in rural Minnesota. He fantasizes about the Vikings winning a Super Bowl one day, but until then he will write about the Vikings. Follow him on Twitter @skol_vikings3
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