In a Single Move, The Vikings Can Put the NFL On Notice
Would it be wise? Maybe not. Would it be bold? Undoubtedly.
The Vikings can put the NFL on notice with a single move. Before the 2025 NFL Draft, credible reporting emerged to indicate that corner Jalen Ramsey was being put on the trade market. So far, a deal has yet to come to fruition. Any chance the Vikings throw caution to the wind by bringing the All Pro and Super Bowl champion to the Twin Cities?
How The Vikings Can Put the NFL On Notice
The critical factor is that the single move wouldn’t be understood as a single move. Rather, it would get placed alongside what has taken place.
Already, Minnesota has invested heavily into beefing up weak spots on their roster. Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave are bolstering the d-line; Ryan Kelly, Will Fries, and Donovan Jackson are doing likewise for the o-line. Byron Murphy Jr., Aaron Jones, Harrison Smith, and Theo Jackson were all retained. Jordan Mason got brought to town to push the running game higher; Isaiah Rodgers is being looked at as a strong CB2 option. Sneaky adds like Justin Skule, Rondale Moore, Jeff Okudah, and Eric Wilson inspire optimism about having a deep enough roster to be able to weather the storm that is an NFL season.
Adding Jalen Ramsey would remove uncertainty about the defense’s potential to be great. All of the sudden, the Brian Flores defense would be looking pretty ferocious a season after finishing 5th in the NFL in points allowed.
Go ahead and reconsider what The NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport had to say about Mr. Ramsey: “The #Dolphins and seven-time Pro Bowl CB Jalen Ramsey are mutually set to explore trade options and it wouldn’t be a surprise if he played elsewhere in 2025, per me and @TomPelissero. Miami and Ramsey, due $25.1M fully guaranteed this season, could be parting ways.”
The update arrived on April 15th, which feels like a lifetime ago.
On Over the Cap, Jason Fitzgerald — an authority on NFL finances — unpacked some of the specifics of how the money would work with a trade. Consider, for our purposes, what would occur to the acquiring team’s salary cap.
“For a team acquiring Ramsey they would be on the hook for a virtually guaranteed $21 million for 2025, which would be the 7th highest salary in the NFL for a corner,” Fitzgerald writes. “The team would have the option to take on all of the cap charge this year or to maintain the option that exists in the contract with the Dolphins and take on a $5.826 million cap charge for this season. Ramsey has a $5 million injury guarantee on his $21 million salary in 2026 which would become fully guaranteed along with a $2 million roster bonus on the 3rd day of the 2026 league year. He has a non guaranteed $21.7 salary million for 2027, and $24 million for 2028.”
Jalen Ramsey, a bit older since he’ll hit 31 in the 2025 season, would patch up any lingering doubts about the Brian Flores defense.
The top-tier corner offers excellent size at 6’1″ and 208 pounds. Jeff Okudah and Dwight McGlothern offer similar size, but neither has the résumé of the Dolphin. Since getting picked at No. 5 back in 2016, Ramsey has won a Super Bowl, been a first-team All Pro three times, a Pro Bowler seven times, and finished as the runner-up for Defensive Rookie of the Year.
Even more promising is that Ramsey has proven to be a versatile player over his career. For the most part, the corner has played along the outside, soaking up 6,387 snaps in the spot. However, he has also moved into the slot with some regularity, picking up 1,235 snaps in that spot. The cherry on top is his 660 snaps in the box (again, he has good size), his 125 snaps as a free safety, and his 124 snaps along the d-line.
The other important detail? The coaching connection. Ramsey won his Super Bowl as an employee of the LA Rams, the same team that had Kevin O’Connell as the offensive coordinator.
The major hindrance with adding Jalen Ramsey is cap cost, not draft capital. In 2026, the Vikings can lean on plenty of picks, at least partly due to the incoming compensatory selections but also due to Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s recent reluctance to move out future selections.
Keep in mind that the Rams only demanded a 3rd in return for the corner a couple years ago, so any deal that does take place is unlikely to be too wild.
Not long ago, Dustin Baker wrote about the possibility of trading for Browns corner Greg Newsome II. Worth noting, as well, that Baker sees the corner position as being one of the team’s question marks, an assessment that’s hard to disagree with at this stage.
At present, OTC estimates that the Vikings have more than $17 million in cap space. Adofo-Mensah would therefore need to shuffle money around to make things work with Jalen Ramsey.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference, PFF, and Over the Cap helped with this piece.
K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on Twitter and Bluesky (@VikingsGazette). If you feel so inclined, subscribe to his Substack, The Vikings Gazette, for more great Vikings content.
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