In a Few Days, The Vikings’ Cap Space Will Get Bumped Up by North of $5 Million
Concerned about the Vikings’ cap space? Lay aside those (justified) worries, if only for a short while.
Very soon, the calendar is going to leave May behind in favor of June. The flip from one month to the other may not hit as an important day for a lot of football fans, but league executives understand the importance of June 1st. Players who were cut with a post-June 1 designation will finally see the cap space liberated, officially putting usable money back into the team’s budget for the present moment.
The Vikings’ Cap Space & The Garrett Bradbury Cut
Moving on from Garrett Bradbury wasn’t a surprise. After all, Ryan Kelly had just been signed. What arrived as a bit of a surprise was the decision to designate the move as being post-June 1.
The most basic takeaway for cutting the center in this manner is twofold. For starters, Minnesota doesn’t get the cap savings — $5.25 million — until after June 1st. If, for instance, Minnesota needed that added cap room to sign free agents in March, then the June 1st approach wouldn’t make sense.
Consider, as well, that the decision leads to the dead money on Bradbury’s contract being spread across a couple of seasons. The former C1 is chewing up $814,000 in dead money for 2025 and $1,628,000 for 2026. No, these numbers aren’t huge when we’re talking about a budget that’s literally hundreds of millions, but it’s nevertheless a factor.
Jason Fitzgerald, the cap wizard for Over the Cap, offers a much fuller, more sophisticated explanation of the post-June 1 cut.
“That being said there is a catch to this rule and this is often overlooked,” Fitzgerald writes. “The team has to carry a player at his full salary cap charge until June 1st even though he has been released from his contract. So the dead money split does not occur in March. It does not help the team create cap room for free agents. It simply gives the team more cap room to use during the rookie signing period and to function when cap accounting expands from 51 players in the offseason to the full roster during the season.”
Keep in mind, folks, that all of the Vikings’ rookies have put pen to paper. The Bradbury savings, then, won’t be needed to get the 2025 cluster of picks under contract.
Rather, Minnesota is going to see their open room swell by $5.25 million. Toss that amount onto Minnesota’s current number — $14,227,752 — and we’re talking about a budget that’s suddenly up to roughly $20 million. More specifically, the Vikings will find themselves at $19,477,752. Not too bad, right?
The Vikings’ cap space will therefore be in a better position to lure more free-agent talent to town (if there ends up being a desire to do so).
The other option, of course, is to sit on those savings, carrying it over to 2026 when the deficit is projected to be pretty dastardly (leading to questions about the future for fan-favorite Vikings like Brian O’Neill and Ivan Pace Jr., among others).
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is a GM who craves flexibility and options. Leaving himself with close to $20 million allows for that precise outcome. If the Vikings show evidence that they’re top-tier contenders in 2025 — whether in the offseason and/or during the season — Adofo-Mensah can lean on that open room to give the roster some added help with an addition.
Working out an extension or two could see the open room get another boost, so that’s something else to keep an eye on (which is to say nothing of extending the GM himself).
Editor’s Note: Information from Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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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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